Finally: gravitational waves observed (indirectly)... In the news this morning is the announcement by a team of scientists that they believe the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole has observed evidence of gravitational waves.
The hunt for gravitational waves was one of several scientific endeavors of the late '50s and early '60s that got me excited about science as a kid. Back then, the state of the art in gravitational wave detection was direct observation via resonant aluminum cylinders weighing up to several tons, using piezoelectric sensors to detect the vibration. These massive precision detectors really caught my fancy, and I read everything about them that I could get my hands on. That search for gravitational waves has continued ever since, with incrementally more sophisticated and sensitive instruments being built in an effort to observe them. Perhaps the most exotic were long baseline interferometers, of which several were built in the western U.S.
And now, finally, it looks as if the scientists have succeeded...
No comments:
Post a Comment