Last Friday, work kept me late at the office. It was a clear and cloudless night and the stars were out as I biked home in the dusk. And as my pedals turned, the night sky wheeled more slowly above me.
This week, the University of Auckland (where I work) announced it is joining the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope collaboration. So what is the LSST, what will it do, and why are we so excited about it?
Just as earthquakes are the release of energy stored in subterranean faults, these gravitational waves were set in motion when two black holes – faults in space itself – became a single, stable object. Call it a spacequake.
Gravitational waves are already the science story of the week but if the rumours hold up they will one of the science stories of the century.
Books could and probably will be written about this saga (science writers, call your agents): there is ambition, drama, excitement, Nobel fever, science-by-media, a telescope at the South Pole, and astrophysicists so hungry for data that they analysed images lifted from in Powerpoint slides when the originals were unreleased.