Artist’s concept of a black hole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Could the rumors be true? After a month of rampant speculation that physicists have finally discovered gravitational waves, today we learn the truth. Lead scientists from the the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) have assembled at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and they’re about to make a big announcement.
It’s hard to overstate just how significant the discovery of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime first predicted by Albert Einstein—would be. If true, it’s easily the biggest science story of the year. Nobel Prizes will be awarded. Cool and collected scientists will go apeshit on Twitter in a way you didn’t realize was possible.
Gizmodo is at the press conference, and we’ll have all the details for you as soon as the news breaks, but if you want to watch history in the making, you can do so right here, right now.