<story><title>Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02167-7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mtlmtlmtlmtl</author><text>Modern physics(and engineering) is kind of absurd. And I mean that in a good way. LIGO? I didn&amp;#x27;t believe at all that it would ever work. Even when they got detections I kinda thought they were chasing their own tails. Now the evidence is pretty much rock solid that the data is real(multiple facilities, correlations with light observations for neutron star mergers, etc).
Then I heard about LISA, which essentially is building this thing in fucking space(different geometry, but same basic concept), with probes somehow orbiting in unison and firing lasers at eachother over ridiculous distances(2.5 million kilometers!). I thought they were raving mad. But pathfinder, the POC, seemed to work, and now they&amp;#x27;re building the thing. Planned for 2037, but still.&lt;p&gt;When I heard about this project in a spacetime video a few years ago IIRC, again I thought okay, this is too far. It&amp;#x27;s never gonna work, there&amp;#x27;ll be too much noise yadda yadda. And it now it looks they might have done it.&lt;p&gt;At this point, if physicists say something is possible, I listen no matter how impossible it sounds.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wefarrell</author><text>This discovery didn&amp;#x27;t actually involve LIGO, nor any other feats of impressive physical engineering. It was made by observing neutron stars and finding patterns in their unexpected perturbations.&lt;p&gt;Neutron star rotation is so consistent that they are used to calibrate atomic clocks[0]. However some of them were glitching and not rotating as expected, but the glitches were consistent between each other. It turns out they aren&amp;#x27;t actually glitching, but spacetime is being distorted by massive gravitational waves.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gizmodo.com&amp;#x2F;scientists-use-spinning-neutron-stars-to-calibrate-atom-1831327033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gizmodo.com&amp;#x2F;scientists-use-spinning-neutron-stars-to...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02167-7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mtlmtlmtlmtl</author><text>Modern physics(and engineering) is kind of absurd. And I mean that in a good way. LIGO? I didn&amp;#x27;t believe at all that it would ever work. Even when they got detections I kinda thought they were chasing their own tails. Now the evidence is pretty much rock solid that the data is real(multiple facilities, correlations with light observations for neutron star mergers, etc).
Then I heard about LISA, which essentially is building this thing in fucking space(different geometry, but same basic concept), with probes somehow orbiting in unison and firing lasers at eachother over ridiculous distances(2.5 million kilometers!). I thought they were raving mad. But pathfinder, the POC, seemed to work, and now they&amp;#x27;re building the thing. Planned for 2037, but still.&lt;p&gt;When I heard about this project in a spacetime video a few years ago IIRC, again I thought okay, this is too far. It&amp;#x27;s never gonna work, there&amp;#x27;ll be too much noise yadda yadda. And it now it looks they might have done it.&lt;p&gt;At this point, if physicists say something is possible, I listen no matter how impossible it sounds.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lasc4r</author><text>I feel like you need to see _this_ spacetime video: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think LISA is mad this will blow your mind.</text></comment>