And its official we have direct gravity wave detection of a two black hole merger detected on two independent LIGO units at exactly the same time stamps ( September 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time). The have only released the area of sky for the event is southern hemisphere but they would know the origin closer than that.
The 7 millisecond difference between the signals in Louisiana and Washington sets the speed of the detected gravity waves at or very close to the speed of light c.
http://phys.org/news/2016-02-scientists-glimpse-einstein-gravitational.htmlhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithab...s/#5e1367f64b15Lots of crackpots will be wheeling out the excuses or going the whole conspiracy path I guess.
Apparently there is also another event under investigation which had also been leaked. The likely detection rate with the current detectors will be one every two-three months, if we have the black hole numbers right. I guess what all the scientists hope for is the gravity wave from an exploding star as it will give data on the metric under completely different conditions.
So we have the first physical proof that black holes exist and that the theory of relativity is the only theory that correctly describes them. I suspect we will see a lot of improvements in black hole physics as the discovery rules some stuff in and lots of stuff out.
There will be lots of countries scrambling to build there own versions of LIGO, Italy will be the next as it has an old LIGO which just needs detector upgrades. Everyone is expecting China to announce plans sooner rather than later.
