You beat me to it! I was going to make a thread for this! :D
I think it's amazing news! Not only has it confirmed the final piece of Einstein's theory of general relatively, but it's also confirmed the existence of Black holes! it's going to revolutionise astrophysics and astronomy allowing us to look into parts of the universe that we haven't been able to so far!
I was really fortunate to visit the Max Planck institute and GEO600 in Germany two years ago, and the work they've been doing there is incredibly impressive! It's been vital in the discovery and it's great to see the success that's come from thirty years of research!
I'm really excited by the news (as I'm sure you can tell!) and I would be astounded if a Nobel prize isn't award for this discovery!
Have read a bit today, and knew I could count on you all to have this thread up.
A quote from Scientific American :: They have to measure a [light particle's curved] path difference smaller than one one-hundredth of a proton, Krauss says. Its amazing they can do that.
Amazing...
Another facility at the Southern Pole has been looking for primordial waves from just after the earliest detected light. LIGO appears to be looking for more current flux bursts....so my question is....what value does detection of a primordial wave have since the effects are so long ago its beyond our true comprehension of that much time.
Looks for polarization, didn't know about either of these facilities til I heard the news.
Really intrigued by this, and how scientific advancements have unfolded in history. e.g. How amazing is it that Kepler was able to infer elliptical orbits so long ago Or how the Parthenon was actually built with curved lines so it 'appeared' perfectly square from a long distance
So hoping we get more amazing events before we die.
The value of the primordial waves; you pretty much answered your question with your own question lol. Detecting events from that time give us an insight into what it was like back then. We still have lots of unanswered questions about how the universe got to be the way it is. Think of a pool game, could you tell how the balls got where they are now after a dozen moves? a thousand? Well if you could hear a recording of those balls clacking (and spent alot of time, effort, and math interpreting it) you probably could. That's essentially what they're trying to do.
Interesting analogy....it's the precision that blows my mind. Hearing 2 balls clack together, and having a precise enough measurement of that sound to reduce the error of position down to a neighborhood of near zero is wonderful and will lead us to amazing discoveries.
Actually I was reading recently an article about LIGO a while back and how they were prepared to handle the results.
Apparently back in 2013 or so they had a team (unknown to anyone else) inject false data into the detector in order to test their reactions. And thus continued up until the first press conference where the leader of the thingy announced it was actually fake.
I think it was just fascinating how they handled it.