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

And the announcement will be

[Anonymous Coward]

"We expect to find some any day now."

Re:And the announcement will be

[RenderSeven]

For an announcement, yes. But this was an announcement for an announcement, like a trailer, so the reveal is probably bigger. And no spoilers please. Clearly the NSF and DOE want the VIP's at LIGO in LA, WA and MIT want to keep the PC on the QT, 'cause if it leaks to CNN and MSNBC the UK and EU might cut the GWIC budget PDQ for AIGO and GEO and the VC's would go MIA. And then we'd all be put on KP.

Re:heavy, man!

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

StartsWithABang and his Forbes bullshit again. So much for new management. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re:Here we go again

[sexconker]

They probably have an existing contract in place that they can't just kill off without being sued.

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!

Anoying Forbes Link!

[0xG]

The heck with that...

Praise science!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine the quality of Yo Mama's So Fat jokes that will come out of this? You don't get that kind of entertainment without spending some cash on science.

Hide Forbes Option?

[Chmarr]

Can I have an option to just hide any articles with links to forbes.com ? That'd be really handy, thanks.

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/*
// @exclude https://.slashdot.org/story/*
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// @grant none
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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:Hide Forbes Option?

[tnk1]

I don't know that the ad blocker can overcome some of the things Forbes has done to deny content to those who use ad blockers.

And to some extent, I don't necessarily blame Forbes for refusing to present content that is supported by something I am blocking, I just wish they'd have ads that I didn't need to block for the sake of mere safe browsing.

I do think that Slashdot might reasonably be asked to not post links to sites which use that sort of brute forced tactic. I don't personally care one way or another, but it is a reasonable request. I won't read a Forbes article, and that makes me less likely to comment on it.

Better non-forbes link

[Anonymous Coward]

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

When did this nonsense start?

[93 Escort Wagon]

This "we're announcing that we'll be announcing something soon" crap, I mean.

The first time I was really aware of it happening was with "Ginger", that silly self-balancing scooter. Then, and every time since, the announcement has been underwhelming at best. Most of the time it's a complete waste of time - so I now let these pre-announcements go in one ear and right out the other.

We have the Internet. If something cool is announced, we'll know about it right away. Stop wasting our time - and yours - with pre-announcements about coming announcements!

Truly we live in the future... but, unfortunately, too often this future makes Futurama look like a prescient documentary.

Re:When did this nonsense start?

[radarskiy]

It not that there are announcements that there are going to be announcements. It's that setting up a schedule to make an announcement so that the relevant people can be there to ask relevant questions is being treated as an announcement itself.

Organizations like LIGO are not the problem; stenographers pretending to be journalists are the problem.

Re:Welcome to the gravitynet

[avandesande]

.... or an alien intelligence has sent us in code the script to a movie about aliens sending plans for a teleportation machine

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.

Misread title

[mattventura]

I thought I would be able to manipulate gravity using LEGO, but was quickly disappointed.

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

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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:Capitalistic Toolbag

[psyclone]

I'm sure StartsWithABang moved from Medium.com to Forbes.com for more money, and I'm still very interested in astronomy articles on Slashdot, but I refuse to read anything on Forbes. Thus we keep having these discussions about how horrible Forbes is and look for alternate links, like a parent poster graciously left us:

http://arstechnica.com/science...

Why wasn't I notified?!

[wonkey_monkey]

LIGO Will Make Gravitational Waves Announcement on Thursday

This is all so sudden! They should have pre-announced this pre-announcement. I mean, officially.

Re:Shame on you slashdot for this...

[Bengie]

Slashdot needs to start a blacklist of domains, starting with forbes and medium.