Gravitational Waves Discovered!

Einstein predicted their existence 101 years ago, and now it's official: we've detected gravitational waves directly for the first time ever!

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Sources:
NSF/LIGO press conference in Washington, DC

Images:

[Blk]

I'm not actually fat, there is just a surplus of gravitational waves around me.

[QuilloManar]

"LIGO observatory..."

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory observatory.

[pacersfan]

My professor is at that conference in DC so she canceled class today haha

[jrobmus]

So that means that these black holes merged over 1.3 billion years ago?! And we just now picked up their minuscule gravitational waves?! Never ceases to amaze me.

[rsher]

kids in africa could of eaten those gravitational waves

[nathanielcowan]

Glad to hear an explanation of the news I've been hearing about so much

[ktmad]

this is... about time! (bu-dah-Pshht!)

[Timocracy]

Einstein's theories are so far out, it took us 100 years to confirm just this one.

I still have no idea what I'm doing this weekend.

[TheMoltenOre]

I honestly don't see the *gravity* of the situation.

[MarvRoberts]

Took you long enough, SciShow. And you know, this means that empty space isn't empty. Space is actually made of something.

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

This day will go down in history for two reasons. The first is the announcement about gravitational waves. The second reason is because today is the day in which the most number of YouTube videos were published covering the same topic.

[supaflylob]

einstein still killing it 100 years later

[PinkGrapefruit]

I got so excited when I saw the news this morning, and then my co-workers had to politely listen with glazed expressions as I ranted about how awesome it was. Alas.

[Imedge]

Was waiting for this video since i've heard about the conference this morning.

We need Neil DeGrasse Tyson commenting about this !

[dibbidydoo]

So you mean we can build warp drives now?

[FlagArmadaProductions]

Wow this year has been ground-breaking, first the 9th planet and now this? Hopefully we'll find aliens next month!

[pinkpandamiranda]

I'm in astronomy class and in the class we had just talked about this. We got to class and my teacher had put up an article on and I got super nerdy and excited. ITS SO COOL. Plus, I live 40 minutes away from LIGO in Hanford!!!! So we're gonna go on a field trip there!

[LayZeeBro]

First they were discovered, then undiscovered. Let keep it DISCOVERED this time for good.

[chrisc]

I like how the observatory used to measure the waves used almost the same setup that was used to try to detect the aether wind.

[tamaddaleno]

thanks for making it way easier to understand