Vatican astronomer discusses gravitational-wave discovery

February 17, 2016

Writing in L’Osservatore Romano, the director of the Vatican Observatory discussed the recent detection of gravitational waves about whose existence Albert Einstein theorized.

“The detection is a triumph of both theoretical and experimental physics,” said Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ. “The theorists were able to calculate just what sorts of signals this detector could find, and what would be needed to detect them; the experimentalists were able to devise just the sort of high precision instrument needed to find them.”

 

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Further information:

• L’orbita della formica (L’Osservatore Romano, p. 5)
• Gravitational Waves Detected, II! The Orbit of an Ant (The Catholic Astronomer)
• Einstein's gravitational waves detected in landmark discovery (Reuters)