[ASA] Gravitational waves are detected!

[Virginia Kilborn]

Dear ASA members,

As you will now know, the first gravitational waves have been detected from the LIGO team - congratulations to the whole (large!) team involved in the discovery.

There are a number of Australian researchers and institutes that are part of the LIGO team and on the discovery paper, including the University of Western Australia, Monash University, Charles Sturt University, Australian National University, the University of Adelaide. In addition, CSIRO helped to build part of the detector in Australia - well done to all.

A few of the many articles on the news are listed below, and the discovery paper is attached.

http://www.nature.com/news/einstein-s-gravitational-waves-found-at-last-1.19361

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-11/einstein's-gravitational-waves:-what-do-they-mean/7159238

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/einsteins-gravitational-waves-detected-in-major-breakthrough/news-story/ab0295587d9a8f7c0585b2aa73e3929c

and all about that chirp:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/gravitational-waves-how-they-sound-and-why-scientists-are-going-nuts-20160211-gms4bc.html


Once again well done to all involved, and we welcome in a new era of discovery!


Virginia
President, ASA


---
Virginia Kilborn
Chair, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing
Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology
Swinburne University of Technology
Ph (w) +61 (0)3 9214 4380
http://www.astronomy.swin.edu.au/~vkilborn/

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