Thursday night – The Wave

pretty exciting day.  This morning every MIT grad got a letter from Prof Rafael Reif, the president of MIT. It said:

“At about 10:30 this morning in Washington, D.C., MIT, Caltech and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will make a historic announcement in physics: the first direct detection of gravitational waves, a disturbance of space-time that Albert Einstein predicted a century ago.”

 

It turns out that last Sept 14th t at 9:51 UTC here was a 1/5th of a second ‘chirp’ when a powerful ripple in space time traveled through the earth… and you and me… The ripple was an echo of the moments just before two black holes collided 1.3 billion years ago.. If my math is correct that was about 7.6369658976E21 miles away.  The chirp was detected by measuring the signal difference between two giant laser interferometers in the LIGO gravitation wave detector in Hanaford Wa and Livingston , LA.  The event confirms a prediction  that Einstein made in 1915

just how friggin’ cool is that ?!?!

The least we can do is wave back !!!!

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

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