In September 2015, sophisticated devices in the United States detected gravitational waves that revealed the validity of Einstein's theory that appeared a century ago, but this great scientific discovery has been kept secret for several months.
Wave origin
In his report, published by the French newspaper Le Monde, the author David La Rocheree said that this discovery, which was the result of cooperation between nearly a thousand physicists from around the world, was not announced until February 11, 2016, which raised questions.
For the first time, an extraterrestrial signal of an unknown nature was detected previously, and neither a radio wave nor a flash of light nor even a mass of cosmic particles, but rather a gravitational wave or so-called gravitational wave.
The writer explained that the origin of this wave dates back to 1.4 billion years, and it has gone through many galaxies before reaching the Milky Way.
On September 14, 2015, it was detected by a wave detector in Louisiana, and then a few detectors monitored it after a few milliseconds in Hanford, Washington, about 4,000 kilometers, before it disappeared from radar and continued its journey through space-time.
This scientific achievement, which confirms the predictions of the German scientist Albert Einstein, was not revealed until 5 months later.
A clash between two black holes
The writer explained that the origin of this phenomenon is a clash between two black holes in an unknown galaxy, orbiting at a rate of 75 revolutions per second, and approaching each other to form a giant vortex.
The collision creates waves such as those caused by throwing pebbles on the surface of a quiet pond, and in the end a new black hole is created that produces a loud boom and then calms down.
On February 11, 2016, David Ritzy, director of the United States’s Gravitational Observatory, announced this scientific discovery that validates the theory of relativity that Einstein formulated in 1916.
It has been unfortunate that this secret was hidden for a full 5 months, according to Harry Collins, a professor of sociology of science at Cardiff University in the UK, who has been concerned with gravitational waves since 1972.
Why do scholars inherit
For his part, Jean-Yves Vignette from the Cote d'Azur Observatory in Nice, France, confirms that waiting is normal in such situations.
He says that scientists believed in September that they saw a mass traveling faster than the speed of light, but later discovered that there was an experimental error in the observation process, and this was repeated in March 2014 when it announced the detection of gravitational waves resulting from the Big Bang, and it was found that they did not You are not.
Eric Chasand Moutin of the Astrophysics and Cosmology Laboratory in Paris adds that scientists detected in September 2010 a wave in the constellation of the oldest dog that they thought might be one of those gravitational waves they had long looked for, but in March 2011 experts revealed that the signal was liar.
According to the author, all of these previous experiences made scientists wait in announcing the new discovery in 2015.
David Schoomaker, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the gravitational waves observatory in the United States, tells how emotions after spotting the wave in 2015 blended happiness with pride and a willingness to do more.
Commitment to strict confidentiality
On September 21, 2015, in a letter to the research team, the director of the US-based WWE Observatory called for total confidentiality on the matter, and confirmed that the results would be published when they were ready.
On the 25th of the same month, research was launched to investigate and confirm this important scientific discovery.
"We were thrilled that we might be about to create a new history, but we had an awareness of assuming our responsibility," said Friedrich Marion of the Annecy Laboratory of Particle Physics, who co-chaired the commission at the time.
Between September 25, 2015 and February 11, 2016 this committee met 24 times, and the indicators were very strong that the observation process was not as wrong as previous times, especially since the wave was captured from two devices in two regions separated by a great distance.
On October 25, Matthew Evans of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was appointed to study the hypothesis of a false signal, but the conclusions were reassuring, and the error hypothesis was completely excluded.
Drafting the article and the official announcement
The author adds that the stage of drafting the scientific article documenting this discovery was a difficult stage and no less important than the investigation stage.
More than 12 copies of the article were presented to the researchers, and many points were discussed, most notably indirect evidence of the presence of gravitational waves, and on January 19, 2016 all the evidence was presented, then the article was sent to the Physical Research Laboratory.
On February 11, the dream came true, and the discovery, which was the culmination of a 40-year scientific effort, was officially announced, and eventually earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2017.