LIGO Will Make Gravitational Waves Announcement on Thursday

StartsWithABang writes: When we look out into the Universe, we normally gain information about it by gathering light of various wavelengths. However, there are other possibilities for astronomy, including by looking for the neutrinos emitted by astrophysical sources - first detected in the supernova explosion of 1987 - and in the gravitational waves emitted by accelerating masses. These ripples in the fabric of space were theorized back in the early days of Einstein's General Relativity, and experiments to detect them have been ongoing since the 1960s. However, in September of 2015, Advanced LIGO came online, and it was the first gravitational wave observatory that was expected to detect a real gravitational wave signal. The press conference on Thursday is where the collaboration will make their official announcement, and in the meantime, here's an explainer of what gravitational waves are, what Advanced LIGO can teach us, and how.

Comments

Better non-forbes link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://phys.org/news/2016-02-thursday-einstein-gravitational.html

Solar Neutrinos First

[Roger W Moore]

StartsWithABang must think Forbes is a popular science magazine.

Well it would be nice if he got his science right then. The first astrophysical neutrinos detected came from the sun and were detected by the Homestake Experiment in the late 1960s for which a Nobel Prize was awarded. Those from SN1987a were the first neutrinos detected from a source outside the solar system.

Re:Hide Forbes Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot: new for nerds that can't write an userscript and prefer waiting for their corporate masters.
Edited from some other post
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// @include http://slashdot.org/*
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// @include https://slashdot.org/*
// @include https://.slashdot.org/*
// @exclude https://.slashdot.org/story/*
// @exclude http://.slashdot.org/story/*
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==

var elements = document.getElementsByTagName('article');

for(var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {

if(elements[i].querySelector('a[href*="forbes.com"]')) {

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Re:I dunno ..

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Here's a thought, why not wait until Thursday for the actual announcement...

So that we'll know to go to an actual news site on Thursday instead of waiting until Monday for Slashdot to run it.

non-Forbes link

[Gravis Zero]

LIGO Scientists Will Make Gravitational Waves Announcement Thursday

Link to announcement

[XXongo]

The actual LIGO Media Advisory is here: http://www.ligo.org/news/media... (with a bunch of links to background info)

Re:Here we go again

[Soulskill]

There's no contract. Or any communication aside from the actual submissions. If you want different astronomy/science stories on Slashdot, you have easy recourse; submit your own!