[Book Review] Fear and loathing in the hunt for gravitational waves
Saturday, April 16, 2016 - 02:58
in Astronomy & Space
On 14 September 2015, at 9:50:45 universal time, humans detected for the first time a gravitational wave—a rippling, infinitesimal stretching of spacetime itself set off when two black holes spiraled into each other. That mind-boggling discovery was made by the 1000 physicists working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a duo of enormous optical instruments in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. Black Hole Blues provides a lively, if not wholly satisfying, account of the 40-year quest to build LIGO. Author: Adrian Cho