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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

As expected [soylentnews.org], gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago, have been detected by the Ligo Collaboration [bbc.com]:

Scientists are claiming a stunning discovery in their quest to fully understand gravity. They have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth. The international team says the first detection of these gravitational waves will usher in a new era for astronomy.

It is the culmination of decades of searching and could ultimately offer a window on the Big Bang. The research, by the Ligo Collaboration [ligo.org], has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters [aps.org]. The collaboration operates a number of labs around the world that fire lasers through long tunnels, trying to sense ripples in the fabric of space-time. Expected signals are extremely subtle, and disturb the machines, known as interferometers, by just fractions of the width of an atom. But the black hole merger was picked up by two widely separated LIGO facilities in the US.

The historic paper in question: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger [aps.org] (open, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102)

Also at NPR [npr.org], NYT [nytimes.com], Scientific American [scientificamerican.com], and Ars Technica Live [arstechnica.com], The New Yorker [newyorker.com].

Original Submission