Science Sunday – LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves

This is the beginning of a series of weekly posts related to current events in science. I’ll pick a big story from the past week and post a video or two about it.

This week, the big news is actually incredibly huge news. LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, which is run by the National Science Foundation, detected gravitational waves for the first time. This confirms what Albert Einstein theorised and what many physicists had suspected for quite some time. What caused the gravitational waves? Two black holes merged into one 1.3 billion light years away, and we were able to observe the resulting gravitational waves. Watch this video by MIT.

And here’s Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining it. Always love having him explain things. I loved this interview.

So, basically, everything that Einstein predicted has been confirmed now. Einstein’s work is correct. Wow. Also, could this be a Nobel Prize for the team?

What do you think of this discovery? Discuss in the comments below!

Incredible Photo of Condensation Vortices from NASA

This is just neat. I saw this photo on Facebook, and had to share it.

See the vortices? You may think it’s photoshopped. It’s not. The conspiracy theorist may think it’s the propellers spraying chemicals. They’re not doing that, either. So what is it?

As the propellers spin, they create a low pressure region as the propeller blade moves out of a space, which in turn causes the water in the air to condense. These are basically thin little clouds. Neat, isn’t it?

What was your first impression when you saw the picture?