Tag Archives: gravitational waves

Highlights from the AAS Conference

Posted on January 12, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

For the past week, over three thousand astronomers from all over the world (including yours truly) met in Seattle, Washington for the American Astronomical Society Winter Meeting, the largest astronomy conference in the world. Much science was announced and discussed, … Continue reading →

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Heavy Metals in the Cosmos

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Alex R. Howe

The recent discovery of gravitational waves from the neutron star merger designated GW170817 is said to prove that heavy metals like gold are produced in this extreme environment and not in supernovae, as was long thought. The teams that discovered … Continue reading →

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LIGO Discovers Colliding Neutron Stars and Cosmic Gold

Posted on October 16, 2017 by Alex R. Howe

(Virgo doesn’t, but that’s still a good thing.) The two LIGO observatories and Virgo are the world’s three operational gravitational wave observatories. These observatories use incredibly precise lasers to detect the ripples in spacetime caused by colliding massive objects like … Continue reading →

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Gravitational Waves Found at Last

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Alex R. Howe

One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity. It was a radical new idea that overturned Newton’s theory of gravity and said things got much more complicated when you were near a massive object. Strange as … Continue reading →

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