早上一到班上打开信箱，跳入眼帘的是几条提醒大家不要错过今天的LIGO新闻发布会的伊妹儿，其中有一条还是MIT的校长发给所有的毕业生的，截屏如下：

校长转的这个链接里有个很不错的视频，把LIGO的原理解释的很清楚。科学家们表现出的面对自然的敬畏心和好奇心，而不是放了卫星后的居功自傲，也让人觉得亲切：

http://news.mit.edu/2016/ligo-first-detection-gravitational-waves-0211

 

Rainer Weiss教授访谈：

http://news.mit.edu/2016/rainer-weiss-ligo-origins-0211

 

MIT的Rainer Weiss教授是最早想到要用激光干涉的方法来探测引力波的人。巧合的是，完成于1887年的迈克尔逊莫雷干涉实验，正是利用光干涉的方法否定了以太的存在，为爱因斯坦的狭义相对论奠定了基础，也为美国科学家赢得了第一枚诺贝尔奖章。迈克尔逊莫雷用来做实验的干涉仪，臂长只有11米。如今用来检测引力波的激光干涉天文台，臂长则有4公里，可以说是一台巨型的迈克尔逊莫雷干涉仪，它把人类探索自然的目光，投向了更遥远的太空。

 

激动之下，把以前旧相册里的照片翻了出来，传上来以飨科学网的读者。

附：两段文摘

 

To a modern physicist,  black holes are also objects of transcendent beauty. They are  the only places in the universe where Einsteins's theory of general relativity shows its full power and glory.  Here, and nowhere else, space and time lose their individuality and merge together into a sharply curved four-dimensional structure precisely delineated by  Einstein's equations. If you imagine yourself falling into a black hole,  your local perception of space and time will be detached from the space and time of an observer watching you from outside.  While you see yourself falling smoothly into the hole without any deceleration, the outside observer sees you coming to a halt at the horizon of the hole and remaining forever in a state of permanent free fall.  Permanent free fall is a situation that can only exist by virtue of the distortion of space and time predicted by Einstein's theory.

 

--from The Scientist as Rebel by Freeman Dyson, excerpt from "Oppenheimer as Scientist, Administrator, and Poet"  

 

To know the stars, to imagine the atom, and to begin to understand how these pieces of the puzzle fit into the cosmic plan is for our species a special pleasure,  perhaps the highest. Today, our knowledge of the universe embraces distances so vast we will never travel them and distances so tiny we will never see them.  We contemplate times no clock can  measure, dimensions no instrument can detect, and forces no person can feel.  We have found that in variety and even in apparent chaos, there is simplicity and order.   The aesthetics of nature reach beyond the grace of the gazelle and the elegance of the rose, out to the farthest galaxy and into the tiniest crevice of existence.

 

-- from Euclid’s Window by Leonard Mlodinow, excerpt from the Epilogue

相关专题：人类首次探测到引力波
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