LIGO Feel That Space | Celebrating Gravitational Waves! (Patreon)

Hello lovely long-time supporters and new patrons alike! Two weeks ago, after months of rumours flying around the internet, the LIGO collaboration announced an incredible find: The detection of a gravitational wave burst originating from two colliding black holes, 1.3 billion light-years away. LIGO's been working toward this for the past 26 years (it was proposed to the NSF the year I was born!) and I've personally been following their progress for the last 8 or so of those. This is a huge moment in physics and astronomy, simultaneously confirming two of the great predictions of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: Black holes, and gravitational waves. More than that, it gives us a new sense with which to look at the universe, like being able to hear as well as see. Gravitational waves can travel unaffected by dense clouds of dust and gas, undistorted by the incredible brightness at the centers of galaxies, and right through the cosmic microwave curtain that right now keeps us from looking back to the birth of the universe. Welcome to the birth of gravitational wave astronomy. With the Galileo's first telescope observations our blind world began to see; with LIGO's first observation we begin to hear.