There is little doubt that September 14, 2015 will go down in scientific history. It was the day that one of the most intriguing predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity morphed from theory into reality. It was the day on which an entirely new field of scientific inquiry, gravitational wave astronomy, was born. And it was the day that human beings acquired a new sense, a completely new way of observing and learning about the universe unlike anything that has existed before.

One year ago today, LIGO detected its first astrophysical event, the merging of two massive black holes. We will look back on this date, one hundred, even one thousand years from now, and recognize the means by which this opened our eyes to the universe in much the same way that Galileo’s first look through the telescope did four centuries earlier.

Learn more at LIGO.org …