12 February 2016
Why The Discovery of Gravity Waves is BIG News
Posted by Dan Satterfield
XKCD’s take on Gravity Waves.
Today’s announcement about gravity waves is REALLY big news. Not because it confirmed Einstein, but because we can now detect something we could not before. When we learned to detect radio waves, the world changed. Detecting X rays lead to amazing advances in medicine and seeing Infrared light lead to cameras that can see at night, along with the ability to measure temperatures, and detect elements on stars and planets. Seeing light that our eyes cannot see has led us to stunning discoveries about our place in the cosmos.
Now we can detect the waves in the spacetime of the universe itself. This may (and almost certainly will!) lead to understandings that we cannot fathom, and tell us about the very moment of the big bang. It may lead to a uniting of relativity and quantum mechanics, and the elusive “Theory of Everything”
This is BIG.
This is, You win a NOBEL PRIZE, big.
This is why great countries fund science, even when it cannot be seen at the time how that research will be beneficial to society. Time and time again, it is these research projects that change the world.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
And your post, Dan, exhibits the reason I have followed your blog for years. It’s not your deep understanding of the science in your chosen field or any other, or even your ability to articulate it to others; it’s your exuberance for science in general; and your willingness to share your own excitement to others.
That’s something we can all cultivate and posses and admire in others; and (in my opinion) your contribution to the world of science has value that is impossible to quantify.
This would be a better world with more like you in it.
And I hope that doesn’t sound as sappy to you as it does to me! 🙂
Thanks Dan!
Sorry for nitpicking, but it’s gravitational waves not gravity waves (which are something different).
Good point, and I agree. It seems almost everyone made that same mistake today, and I am not sure it is worth correcting, but there is indeed a difference.