LIGO

An artist’s rendering of two black holes spiraling around each other, a phenomenon scientists believe produced the gravitational waves of the GW170104 signal detection of Jan. 4, 2017
Credit...LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet), via Science Source

I remember when LIGO proved Einstein right regarding gravity and the impact it has on reality. Astounding science, astounding tech, something exquisitely creative and bold and now, it might go away thanks to a brain dead administration from hell. A country without science, tech and research, as stated before, is a country losing relevancy as civilization moves further into the 21st century. Now, China leads and the distance between her and us grows ever larger as the enormous talent and experience in all things related to science, tech and research slowly withers away, replaced by intolerance, ignorance and the death of curiosity, the prime driver of all things relating to the creative act.

It’s been 10 years since astronomers first felt the universe tremble.

At 4 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2015, in both the desert of eastern Washington State and the backwoods of Louisiana, two beams of light began quivering in distant synchrony as the space through which they were traveling stretched and shrank at a rate of 250 times a second.

These were the twin antennas of the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO. Far out there in time and space a pair of black holes, gargantuan pits of eternally dark nothingness, had collided and merged, sending gravitational waves rippling through the universe and across the paths of the two antennas.

The whole encounter lasted one-fifth of a second. But that instant changed astrophysics, opening a window onto previously inaccessible realms of nature in which space could rip, bend, puff up, crumple and even vanish.

Most precise ruler ever constructed: This animation illustrates how the twin observatories of LIGO work. One observatory is in Hanford, Washington, the other in Livingston, Louisiana. Each houses a large-scale interferometer, a device that uses the interference of two beams of laser light to make the most precise distance measurements in the world.

The animation begins with a simplified depiction of the LIGO instrument. A laser beam of light is generated and directed toward a beam splitter, which splits it into two separate and equal beams. The light beams then travel perpendicularly to a distant mirror, with each arm of the device being 4 kilometers in length. The mirrors reflect the light back to the beam splitter, repeating this process 200 times.

When gravitational waves pass through this device, they cause the length of the two arms to alternately stretch and squeeze by infinitesimal amounts, tremendously exaggerated here for visibility. This movement causes the light beam that hits the detector to flicker.

Exquisite says it all.