At the Atlas computing center of the Max Planck Institute in Hannover, shortly before 12:00 p.m., Italian physicist Marco Drago (a young postdoc), responsible for studying some of the data arriving from the two large LIGO antennas in the United States, designed to detect gravitational waves—”vibrations” in space-time—receives an “alert” email from the American LIGO detectors in Louisiana and Washington state, which have just been turned on. It’s the first direct observation of gravitational waves. Immediately calling a colleague, Drago realizes that what they’re observing is a binary black hole system, but they’re under no illusions. They’re convinced it’s just a fake, that is, data intentionally inserted into the system to verify that all the alert systems are functioning properly. And yet, there it is: simply marvelous. Beautiful, clean, a dream. The certainty of the discovery came only a month later. “As soon as we heard about the confirmation, we uncorked a bottle we had prepared in the office,” Drago added, “but before we could publicly announce it, we had to wait months. Now we’re going to have a big party.” Confirmation will arrive in February 2016, with a confidence level of 5.1 sigma. The merger of two black holes with masses 36 and 29 times that of the Sun occurred a billion years ago. Three solar masses were converted into energy. With this final piece of the puzzle, the experimental detection of all the effects of General and Special Relativity is complete.
