Gravitational Waves confirmed!

The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) scientists report the first ever confirmation of gravitational waves. They detected an event on September 14, 2015 during a non-science test of the facilities' updated equipment. After months of ensuring that what they detected (nearly simultaneously at both facilities, thousands of miles apart) was not a fluke or mistake, and having their findings peer-reviewed, they have announced their discovery.

The peer reviewed paper has just been published and I have not yet read it.

A bit more info about what was observed:
The event happened 1.3 billion light years away/ago. It was a merger of 2 black holes, both near 30 solar masses, into a single, larger black hole. The event emitted more power than all of the stars in the universe combined for ~20 milliseconds. The final black hole is 3 solar masses less than the combined masses of the 2 "parent" black holes. This difference of 3 solar masses is the amount of energy that was released in the form of gravitational waves during the event. I.e. 3*mc^2, where m is the mass of the sun, energy was converted from mass energy to gravitational wave energy in ~20 milliseconds.

Wowwee!


This is effectively the first thing we've seen with this new kind of eyes we made.