Gravitational waves detected by LIGO
I'm am really confused as to how Martin Rees has written such a poor article. He's bloody Astronomer Royal. I suspect a ghostwriter.a) Gravitational waves do NOT "shake the mirrors". They make spacetime contract in orthogonal directions around and within the beam tube (and of course elsewhere) thus causing the light to travel a tiny bit further in the tube, thus causing interference by moving the two beams out of phase.b) As I posted the other day - what about Virgo? What about GEO600? I feel really sorry for the scientists who've spent decades working on this as part of a global collaboration to now have LIGO take all of the credit for this discovery.