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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>>…the holes were spinning even before they merged.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00573-4??utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_campaign=2019-0218-GLOBAL-NSDAY&utm_content=NSDAY" target="_blank">LIGO to spot one black-hole merger per hour</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>John K Clark</span><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>If I had read the first line of the Nature article 5 years ago, I would have concluded that the editorial staff of Nature had gone completely bonkers:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'>Spotting gravitational waves is due to become an almost hourly event in the next decade. Starting around 2023, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) will undergo its most significant upgrade since 2015, UK and US funding agencies announced on 14 February.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'>LIGO has astonished me so many times since 2016, I will no longer second-guess the experiment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'>Just writing the comment above, I remember well the date: 24 May 2016, up at Stanford’s linear accelerator. The astronomy geek crowd had been buzzing for some time, but the LIGO people were going to present their data. That meeting is burned into my memory: they moved it to the main auditorium because the crowd had swelled. My friend and I got there early enough to get a seat in the Panofsky, which has about 400 seats, but plenty of people were milling around outside the packed building or listening in on CCTV in another auditorium nearby.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'>That was the coolest scientific meeting I have ever attended. I can only imagine what that would feel like to be able to present that, what it would feel like to be Brian Lantz. He gave a lecture on the data they collected, went thru the evidence from the two detectors, then explained that if you convert the gravity wave to a sound wave, it would sound like this: bwiip.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'>What would it be like to stand up there and look at a sea of stunned faces of people like us?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times",serif;color:#222222;background:white'>spike</span><o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>