.
All this inferred from the timing of a signal so weak that it moved a set of mirrors less than the size of a subatomic particle.
This is science. This is what we humans do. We can plumb the depths of the Universe without ever leaving home, but instead explore by patiently waiting and cleverly listening in ways our ancestors couldn’t even have imagined.
And yet, despite all this, we're just getting started. In the case of gravitational waves this is literally true; we’ve been listening for decades but detected the first signal less than two years ago. Even today, a whole new field of observational physics is still possible to be opened.
What awaits us ahead? What new and amazing things have we yet to learn, yet to imagine?
It's a big Universe, and it whispers its existence to us constantly. With science, we can hear what it has to say.
Image Credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)