If you follow physics, you have likely heard the rumor by now: Physicists working with a pair of gigantic detectors have finally discovered gravitational waves—ripples in space and time set off when, say, two massive neutrons stars spiral into each other—and have only to announce it. It would be a sure-fire Nobel Prize–winning discovery and the rumor sounds plausible. Sensing those waves is exactly what a $500 million project called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was built to do. Numerous news outlets have reported the rumor, prompted by Twitter posts by Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and author at Arizona State University, Tempe.
There's a qualification, however: By his own account, Krauss has spoken to nobody in the 900-member LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
"I never said I've talked to anybody in the collaboration," he tells ScienceInsider. "That's why I used the word rumor. I don't know how to be clearer."
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