To all colleagues at MIT:
This morning at 10:30 AM, MIT, Caltech, and the National Science Council will announce our historic physics discovery in Washington, D.C.: We have detected for the first time the existence of gravitational waves, which Einstein predicted a century ago.
Regardless of its importance, I don’t usually send emails specifically for individual research achievements, as our research community consistently makes significant discoveries. However, I hope you will reflect deeply on the significance of humanity’s first detection of gravitational waves, because it macroscopically explains why and how humanity explores profound scientific questions, and why these questions are important.
Today’s news covers at least two important items:
🌟 First: Science News — The Triumph of General Relativity
Einstein accurately predicted the behavior of gravitational waves using general relativity. Gravitational waves are tiny wrinkles in spacetime deep within the universe. These fluctuations are so subtle that they have escaped scientists’ detection until now. But LIGO has successfully captured these subtle signals; the gravitational waves they detected originated from the collision of two supermassive black holes forming a larger new black hole. This discovery tells us that we have obtained tremendous evidence that general relativity does indeed accurately describe the workings of the universe.
Even the most advanced optical telescopes cannot detect the existence of black holes because they do not emit any light, so we cannot observe the massive collision of two black holes. But through LIGO’s instruments, we can now “listen” to such events. Through entirely new methods of perception, LIGO is able to record important natural events that were previously unknown, and the LIGO team’s exploration with their new tools is just beginning. This is why humanity invests in science.
🧑🔬 Second: Human Achievements — Enduring Perseverance and Investment
It began with Einstein, a vast human mind whose ideas about the universe predated human empirical capabilities by a full century, and this story was continued by Rai Weiss and his research team’s scientific creativity and patience. Leading a multinational team, they spent decades overcoming countless obstacles at the forefront of technology, turning the impossible into possible, and finally transforming a brilliant idea into a real scientific discovery.
Important figures in this story also include dozens of scientists outside the team, as well as administrators of the National Science Council, who for decades systematically evaluated the feasibility of this ambitious project and ultimately determined that it was worth such a massive financial investment.
We also cannot miss the latest development in this story, where the LIGO team revealed to the research community the cautious approach they took in making their discovery. Through meticulous analysis and peer review, they finally gained sufficient confidence in their findings. As they shared their discoveries with the world, a completely new field of research was born.
🚀 The Value of Basic Science
At institutions like MIT, countless scholars dedicate themselves to solving real-world problems, to the point that we sometimes use “actual output” to evaluate the value of national funding for basic science. The discovery of gravitational waves may seem unrelated to “actual output,” but it still produced many immediate “results.” LIGO has always been an excellent institution for training undergraduate and doctoral students; in fact, two of our faculty members are LIGO alumni. Moreover, the LIGO team’s innovation and application created experimental instruments with unprecedented precision.
As members of MIT, we are acutely aware that no one can resist the allure of new tools. The technology developed by LIGO will undoubtedly be adopted and further developed very quickly, producing tremendous “results” in fields that no one can currently foresee. Watching how these new technologies blossom and bear fruit will be incredibly interesting.
The discovery we celebrate today also symbolizes the paradox of basic science. It is arduous, rigorous, and slow, yet exhilaratingly innovative and dynamic. Without basic science, everything we know today would be just as we knew yesterday, and innovation would stagnate at the forefront.
As science advances, so too will society. I am proud and grateful to be a member of the MIT community (http://mit.edu/), fortunate to have the opportunity to understand and appreciate this tremendous discovery and to be ready to unlock its infinite possibilities.
Source: MIT