The detection is announced and published
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration announced GW150914 publicly and published it in Physical Review Letters, five months after the event and after an extended internal validation including blind injection checks. The delay is part of the record: an unrepeatable one-off signal in a novel instrument required demonstrating that the collaboration could not have produced it accidentally or deliberately. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for the work that made the detection possible.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Gravitational waves · phenomenon · not located
- LIGO Hanford Observatory · research facility · United States
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
The first direct detection of gravitational waves, from the merger of two black holes on 14 September 2015. V55 VERIFICATION BASIS: not consulted in session; WebFetch to www.ligo.org and every other host was refused by the egress proxy. Volume and article number are from recall of a canonical citation; component masses and distance quoted in this pack are recalled central values with uncertainties omitted.
Physical Review Letters (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration) · 2016-02-11 · Partly verified
B. P. Abbott et al., Physical Review Letters 116, 061102 (2016)
Recorded on Gravitational waves
- Einstein presents the field equations of general relativity
- GW150914 - two black holes merge and the signal reaches Earth
- The detection is announced and published
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- GW150914 - two black holes merge and the signal reaches Earth · 2015-09-14 09:50:45 UTC
- Einstein presents the field equations of general relativity · 1915-11