Gravitational Waves: Einstein Was Right, Again, Maybe
Bang! Supernova SN 2006gy Nasa/CXC/M. Weiss What's the latest cosmology gossip? According to the BBC, the field is awash with rumors that next week, American scientists will announce the detection of gravitational waves: incredibly small ripples carrying energy across the void of the universe. Space.com reports simply that at a press conference scheduled for 12:00 noon EDT on Monday, March 17, "[A] team of scientists will unveil what they bill as a 'major discovery' in the field of astrophysics...at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics." Predicted by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity, gravitational waves are speculated to be “an echo of the big bang [sic] in which the universe came into existence 14bn year ago,” writes the Beeb, which caught an echo of the intense excitement that seems to be swirling among scientists with...