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The team operating LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) have done it. I did not think that we would detect gravitational waves myself until we had a space-based instrument in place, but I was wrong! A new way of observing the universe has begun. In addition to the visible spectrum, radio waves (and other electromagnetic wavelengths) and neutrino telescopes, we now have gravitational waves. The 'telescopes' do look a bit different and are much bigger, but they will open up areas of the universe for our study that are invisible with other means. The telescopes needs to be able to detect a change in the relative length of their 'arms' at one part in a billion trillion. This is equal to measuring a movement of less than the size of an atom - if the detector itself was the size of the Earth! What Grav telecopes can be used for; In particular, pulsars and black hole observation, and the formation of super-massive black holes and some of the events which happened prior to recombination can now be studied. Cosmology - my area of interest - will progress more rapidly now. Well done to the team at LIGO, and special congratulations to the Australian team including Australian National University and the University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide whose technical contribution was very significant to the success in the detection of gravitational waves. The two coalescing black holes were stellar mass (the largest ever found) at 29 solar masses and 36 solar masses. The resulting black hole is estimated to be 62 solar masses, and a spin of 0.67. The distance to the coalescing black holes is estimated at 1.336 billion light years, and in the direction of the Magellanic clouds, (near the south celestial pole). The estimated mass lost to gravitational wave production is 6 x 10^30 kg. Paper; Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger; http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102