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MIT scientist makes waves with work to detect gravitational waves

Rainer Weiss

The New York Times reports a team of scientists, including Rainer Weiss of MIT have confirmed the presence of gravitational waves, something Einstein predicted in 1915, but which have never before been detected.

Two detectors, each 2.5 miles long and 1,900 miles apart, detected waves from the collision of two black holes about 1.2 billion years ago, almost as soon as they were turned on for testing, the Times reports.

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Comments

i knew what two black holes colliding looked like

IMAGE(http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/blogs/6a00d8341bf67c53ef014e87cd2a4c970d-800wi.jpg)

From Discovery.com:
"In this striking image, optical light (from the Hubble Space Telescope) and X-ray data (from the Chandra X-ray Observatory) have been combined, highlighting the two supermassive black holes as they stare at each other across the chaos of disturbed stars, dust and hot gas in the center of NGC 6240 (NASA/CXC/MIT/STScI C.Canizares, M.Nowak)"

(Note that this is not the pair of black holes featured in today's amazing announcement from LIGO.)

Fixed, thanks.

handled with the appropriate gravitas

does he have kanye's permission? #tlop

Should be asking for Max B's permission.

Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-Wave Observatory
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/

Sorry if this is only on Facebook right now - it will probably hit the OkGo Youtube feed soon!

https://www.facebook.com/okgo/videos/10153210535420683/

I wonder if they had to pay extra for the paint cleanup.

But remember, kids: Gravity's not just a good idea - It's the law!

It's just a theory. You know, like evolution.

Tesla is behind all this somehow..........

I was going to blame Baker or GE...

Gravity challenging plates of gravlax carried on gravitational waves spun from galactic gravatrons with gravitas and aplomb.