This thing was a billion light years away.  Say it were closer; let&#x27;s put it at a single light year away.<p>LIGO measures wave amplitude, as far as I can tell, which goes down linearly with distance (unlike wave energy, which goes down quadratically, since it&#x27;s proportional to square of the amplitude).  So we could expect to see an effect about a billion times bigger.<p>The detected effect was a change in metric of one part in 6e20 if I&#x27;m not mistaken: (4e-3 * (diameter of proton))&#x2F;4km based on the article&#x27;s claim of &quot;four one-thousandths of the diameter of a proton&quot;.  So at one light year distance we could expect an effect of one part in 6e11.<p>Not really visible on the human scale, seems to me.  You could detect it easily with something like the Mössbauer effect, I expect.  Your typical lab bench laser interferometer has errors on the order of 1 in 1e6 as far as I can tell, so probably wouldn&#x27;t be able to pick this up.<p>Disclaimer: I could be totally off on what a lab bench laser interferometer can do.  I&#x27;m pretty confident in the rest of the numbers above.