Can gravitational waves be waylaid by gravity?
Yesterday, I learnt the answer is 'yes'. Gravitational waves can be gravitationally lensed. It seems obvious once you think about it, but not something that strikes you (assuming you're no…
gravitational waves
11 posts
A shorter article about short gamma ray bursts lights up little
* Identify a simple and well-defined question * Describe the question and answer it * Get the fuck out Writing with these three rules in mind makes for a good science article. You stick to the poi…
Onto drafting the gravitational history of the universe
It's finally happening. As the world turns, as our little lives wear on, gravitational wave detectors quietly eavesdrop on secrets whispered by colliding blackholes and neutron stars in distant re…
Neutron stars
When the hype for the announcement of the previous GW detection was ramping up, I had a feeling LIGO was about to announce the detection of a neutron-star collision. It wasn't to be – but in my ex…
The nomenclature of uncertainty
Many science articles in the past year dealt with observations falling short of the evidence threshold but which have been worth writing about simply because of the desperation behind them. Has this prompted science writers to think about the language they use?…
A universe out of sight
We've been able to find that the universe is expanding faster than we thought. The LHC has produced the most data on one day. Good news, right?…
What's the universe telling us post-LIGO?
Since the LIGO Scientific Collaboration announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves on February 11, 2016, there have been at least 51 scientific papers written up on the topic discussi…
Roundup of missed stories – February 14, 2016
Developments I’d have liked to cover but haven’t been able to for lack of time.…
Tracing the origins of Pu-244
Plutonium-244 could've come from neutron-star mergers, so knowing its abundance could reveal the rate at which such mergers happen.…
As the ripples in space-time blow through dust...
The last time a big announcement in science was followed by an at least partly successful furor to invalidate it was when physicists at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, Italy, claimed to have recor…
Feeling the pulse of the space-time continuum
Humans have known about the force of gravity since ancient times. Yet, we are still exploring its true nature, how it works, and why it works the way it does.…