Space.com reports simply that at a press conference scheduled for 12:00 noon EDT on Monday, March 17, “[A] team of scientists will unveil what they bill as a ‘major discovery’ in the field of astrophysics…at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.” Predicted by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity, gravitational waves are speculated to be “an echo of the big bang [sic] in which the universe came into existence 14bn year ago,” writes the Guardian, which caught an echo of the intense excitement that seems to be swirling among scientists with these and other quotes: This seems to be a fantastic moment in time to be a physicist. In addition to this possible discovery of gravitational waves, theorists are still digesting data gathered in 2012 from the Large Hadron Collider, including proof of the existence of the elusive Higgs particle. That’s the story covered in the engrossing new film “Particle Fever,” which you should definitely go see.
