Hi all,
This is my last post here for today, and it has little to do with
WSJT-related software development. But its topic has occupied much of
my time for the past ten days -- and it has made me feel as excited as a
youngster with a new scientific toy! A few have asked offline if I
would share some insider details, so here goes...
A press conference was held this morning at the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C., to announce the LIGO/Virgo collaboration's detection
of gravitational waves from a binary neutron-star coalescence event.
The event occurred some 130 million years ago, in a distant galaxy
called NGC 4993. The gravitational waves traveled here at the speed of
light, arriving at Earth on August 17, 2017. Best of all, the collision
event event was also detected in gamma rays, X-rays, ultra-violet,
visible light, infra-red, and radio waves: nearly the whole
electromagnetic spectrum! You can watch the recorded press conference
and get some idea of the scientific excitement here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEPIwEJmZyE
You'll find a few more scientific details on the American Physical
Society's web site: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v10/114 .
You might be interested in a sidelight relevant to ham radio: the
"Hulse-Taylor" team mentioned in the APS article could equally well be
called the "WB2LAV-K1JT" team. In 1974, when Hulse and I did the work
described in the APS piece, he was my graduate student. Both of us were
working in radio astronomy in part as a result of our boyhood interest
in Amateur Radio.
-- 73, Joe, K1JT
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
_______________________________________________
wsjt-devel mailing list
wsjt-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wsjt-devel
