Members of the scientific world are often excited by their new discoveries, which is, in my honest opinion, the best part about being a geek. But few announcements are as exiting to non-physics adepts as the one supposed to take place on Thursday. According to multiple reports, Thursday brings announcement regarding gravitational waves.
January’s Twitter teaser
Remember January’s moderately big Twitter scandal which got a large chunk of the scientific world annoyed with a single researcher? In case you don’t, I’m talking about international award winning scientists Lawrence Krauss, which issued a Twitter tease that issued huge discussion on the Internet.
Despite the man not working on the project, he couldn’t really keep his excitement in check, so he decided to announce to the whole world that we may soon see proof of the existence of Einstein’s much sought-after gravitational particles.
Since the famous scientist wasn’t actually working on the project, it’s understandable that the team that did got quite angry when they saw that the results of their work were teased before they even finished the research.
Of course, the Tweet wasn’t meant to upset anyone. Dr. Krauss got confirmation from a reliable source, and he just couldn’t keep it to himself. After seeing that his tweet was greeted with so much negativity by the scientific world, he apologized, saying that he simply wanted to get other people as excited about the future announcement as he already was.
Despite the fact that the announcement was slightly delayed because of extra tests to ensure the accuracy of the findings due to increased expectations from the public, the team finally set their announcement for Thursday, January 11th, at 10:30 a.m. in Washington.
Gravitational waves
Gravitational waves, if actually discovered, will be to wormhole physics basically what the Rosetta stone was to archaeologists. But what are they, more exactly, other than a part of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?
They are basically ripples in the space-time continuum’s curvature, travelling outward from the source; the source is generally an object of immense power, such as a black hole. Einstein assumed that they were able to transport energy through space and time in the form of gravitational radiation.
If the announcement this Thursday ends up confirming Einstein’s century old theory, it would mean that the team operating MIT’s and Caltech’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, is practically responsible for the first steps of wormhole transportation of energy – and possibly, eventually, the ability to enter hyperspace.
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