LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves
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- čas přidán 10. 02. 2016
- After a decades-long quest, The MIT-Caltech collaboration LIGO Laboratories has detected gravitational waves, opening a new era in our exploration of the universe.
Read more: news.mit.edu/2016/ligo-first-d...
Produced by MIT Video Productions and MIT News Office
Producer/Editor: Bill Lattanzi
Footage courtesy of: Hans Peter Bischof; California Institute of Technology; Jet Propulsion Laboratory; LIGO, A Passion for Understanding, by Kai Staats; MIT; National Science Foundation; Roger Smith; Virginia Trimble, widow of Joseph Weber; Wikipedia Commons - Věda a technologie
being alive to witness this discovery is a great honor
+zaid wadi Is your icon Yui?
+zack hjorth yes it is
Yui is life
+zaid wadi if it stands up to scrutiny. 1/1000th the size of a proton... We can't even standardize the measure of Levi's. What makes anyone think this is more than careful manipulation of the algorithm? We can't even locate protons accurately.
And look at all the effort people are putting into making these videos inspire an emotional impact? If it was a major breakthrough, where's the boring press conference about it? Instead we get these campy inspirational videos.
More proof, more data, less emotional fuckery, then let's calls this a discovery.
you was always going to be alive
In response to ignorant people in comments, the main reasons why this is a big deal:
*1*. It is the last confirmed prediction of general relativity.
*2*. Gravitational waves were thought to be impossible to detect for over 100 years, and by Einstein.
*3*. Many people have dedicated their entire careers, and millions of dollars to this discovery.
*4*. Despite the fact that the waves exactly coincided with the predictions made by general relativity, if, in the future, we detect inconsistencies it could give us clues to new modified theories of gravity, or other theories.
*5*. If we develop more sensitive gravitational wave detectors we will be able to detect events happening within the Milky Way, and it will basically open up a whole new field of astronomy and observational physics.
and while we cannot detect gravitons, this is gives us proof that they actually do exist.
Thank you I've been trying to find out the big deal is. for 30 min. This is great
3 Years later and you just gave me the exact 5 points I needed for my A-Level Physics so thanks!
Is Gravitational Wave affect Quantum Mechanic too?
It would seem quite a few smart people think these measurements are questionable...I'm not convinced what is being detected is "gravity waves". Honest 3rd party scientists are necessary with claims like this, and should not be ignored but confronted with humility.
Albert Einstein found this out around 100 years ago, and he did it by just observing nature and thinking about it, without having the tools to backup his theories by measurements. Just goes to show again how much of a genius he was.
He didn't observe nature or thought about it. It is the equations and mathematics that revealed their existence.
@@HimanshuRohela then how did he come up with those equations?
You are so fat that when you walk ligo detects gravitational waves
@@marcusgarvey7588 Go back to CZcams Kids
Einstein was smart, but ultimately will be proven wrong. Unfortunately LIGO's "gravitational wave" detection is very much debatable, surprised this fact has not been highlighted as much as I (and many other people much smarter then me) think it really should. Sorry, didn't mean to come in and be a "party pooper". Science dont care how we dislike the process of progress though~
I'm hoping for a time when this kind of discoveries will be on the top of the trending list in CZcams.
well 2023 it seems they are getting closer
@@nuna9717 mhm
nerds for the win!
it will never surpase cat videos
This is great news. Obviously, you had this video completed long in advance, since the announcement about the discovery was just made a few minutes ago, and the press conference is still going on as I type this message.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky
Can a Nobel prize be given posthumously ? If so, Bertie One Stone should get it....again.
+onionman4 they cannot
They made the discovery 4 months ago
+steveis1234 yeah, but MIT only posted this video a few minutes after the announcement was made.
Emil Haugen Beats me I guess
Unbelievable achievement. Very honored to have had all three LIGO winners on our podcast.
Bernie Schutz was also part of the team with this great achievement
You have no podcast.
I'm not actually fat, there is just a surplus of gravitational waves around me.
Brandon Wiebe The LIGO is nothing more then a sophisticated HOLOMETER device.
Holometer is a instrument designed to study the quantum character of space itself. It measures the quantum coherence of location with unprecedented precision. And the gravity wave is nothing more then quantum fluctuations and NOT gravitational waves!
@@cymoonrbacpro9426 hopefully we can use LIGO to track down the gravitational waves of who tf asked
@@cymoonrbacpro9426 who tf asked
love the eastern beat in the background
CALTECH & MIT creators, thank you for having the vision to build this machine. I look forward to learning more about what you see in our universe. It is quite fitting that a very understandable / elegantly designed measuring device confirms the existence of gravitational waves.
This event was detected September 14, 2015. Now it's February 11, 2016 !! they spent 4 month doing the calculations !!
Most of the time they spent verifying the results to ensure they didn't make a mistake and peer review by other competent scientists world over.
The Experimental Scientific Process in the professional world could even take years. LIGO has the advantage that measurements are easier and faster to see. Expect to see this discovery to get nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics
+Atlas Enderium Maybe, but Nobel Prizes in Physics are given out to individuals, not groups. The man who designed the detector will probably be nominated if anybody is.
+Abdulrahman Mahdaly No longer will September 14 have the stain of being the day that Windows ME was released. Now it will be known as the day gravitational waves were discovered.
+Professor Ess Nope, thanks to the way the internet works whatever day news outlets and social media picked this "trend" up will be the day.
Can't stop talking about this huge achievement with family, friends and colleges :) Congratulations.
When I was young, we just had Six Flags and Disney. Kids today have LIGOLand too.
:| I get it...funny funny you are ;)
😂😂😂
This is an honour for me to witness. What a time to be alive. These people are so passionate and determined at what they are doing, it is honestly so inspiring. Keep up the work, guys. And oh, shout out to my boy Einstein, I know you are looking down smiling. Incredible!
I learned about the theory behind this experiment in school as a young man. Honestly, I was doubtful it would be possible to prove this during my lifetime. Thanks to all the scientists who made this possible!
Woah! Last year, people from LIGO came over to WSU to tell us what they were doing. Awesome to see them succeed!
I'm really excited for more exciting new discoveries to be made in the next decade
0:42 dude looks like mike and Walter combined
Lmao
I love how the scientists use the glorious metric system at first and then translate it for people who don't know it :D
It's not our fault that our government decided to educate over 300 million people this way, we have no control over what we're taught in the first few years
I really admire you people. I’ll never be able to fully grasp this type of information but it amazes me.
I’m definitely proud of the people who made it happen. Huge Kudos.
who can dislike this video?
+StarTrek123456 my guess is they are people who BELIEVE something else.
+StarTrek123456 music
+StarTrek123456
ISIS?
+StarTrek123456 I really think there are automatic youtube downvotes... Ive never in my life seen a video without dislikes. No matter how amazing
Has anyone wondered how the ''thumb down'' feature under the videos works, while the ''thumb down'' feature for comments is out of order?
i wanna surf that wave
+Kim Jong Fun technically we are already ;-)
+Beyond Psychology
Maybe they'll figure out how to make the board,
and paddle, and see some bigger swells!
Hatch Jerod setting off nuclear blast behind a spaceship is one theoretical possibility that has been proposed. Takes a lot of balls to ride that wave lmao
+Beyond Psychology
4 women are up for a Mars mission. Takes more than that! lol
Hatch Jerod um OK.
Absolutely ASTOUNDING and I couldn't be more proud of my fellow MIT alumni- this is what happens when you bring the two most brilliant academic institutions in the world together- congratulations to MIT, Caltech, and indeed, humanity!
I went to ligo for a field trip just a week ago! I don't know I just feel really proud since they discovered this and I live like 30 min away from Hanford,WA
Respect to you guys ! :)
congratulations from Pakistan !
+ermistan How's Osama Bin Laden doing?
+The Truth depends, which one of them?
+The Truth he's pretty good. sipping tea right next to me.
+Dalton Villanueva try watching the movie 'tere bin laden' its a pretty good movie you'll enjoy it.
+ermistan You really don't need to mention your country.
I am so hyped right now.
What a wonderful and monumental achievement! Congratulations to all on the team.
It amazing how fine the measurements are. the sensitivity :). Kudos to the LIGO team
EVETRY PERSON IN THE WORLD SHOULD BE PROUD OF THAT !
Especially Albert Einstein he explained this 40 years ago
+burak kerten lol check when Einstein died haha
i mean 140 years ago lol
+Abuzetun Musab Why did I almost cry when he said that?
+Abuzetun Musab
Yeah, also be proud for the NASA fake moon landings
To most people this is just another news title, to few others this is a tear-jerking moment. I'm the former, and hope to one day be the latter. All the best!
It's amazing to think how this could affect our daily life and studies of the universe.
How fantastically passionate those scientist are!
now where's my hoverboard?
how do you fund a project like this!?
+Higgins2001 nice 1
+Higgins2001 They say it right at the beginning of the video. 0:39. NSF, National Science Foundation.
Kojisan1 You think NSF footed the entire bill? And over how much time did they have to build, and how hard was it to hit continuous funding goals?
I'm interested in details, because such giant, expensive projects for pure scientific research probably don't just get fully paid for in one check from one foundation - however such projects are incredibly important for furthering human knowledge.
It's interesting to learn how these projects not only get launched, but how they are brought to completion :)
+Higgins2001 Tax payers money, but its worth it.
+Higgins2001 About funding ... How much cost one aircraft carrier, ICMB or ICMB platform like a nuclear sub ? The world would be a much better place if a superpowers had act accordinlgy to that fact. But it unfortunately never happens.
Congratulations guys! I'm very excited rigth now.
Cheers from Mexico.
This project has been Amazing 🤩 I’ve checked back on from season to season
Breakthroughs
So does this mean that anti-gravity devices or ships can be created now...
+pavolon nope. :/
+undo.kat oh so yeah... np let's science the shit out of this bitch lmao (sarcasm)
+undo.kat Well, it's 1000 times smaller than the size of a proton this far away from the gravity source. Close to the black holes it's enough to tear your atoms apart.
This adds more evidence to inflation theory which means infinite number of universes.
Fred Marz explain? :-)
0:40 - Walter White's continuing battle with cancer
+.ENGLISH PROFICIENCY i lol'd
Found this after 5 years but still feeling amazed .
This is unbelievably awesome.
so what does all of this mean?
+Lyle Mitchell (Nortio) From what i know, Gravity is a physical thing, and therefore could possibly go faster than light, or not, but who knows? its all a bunch of science stuff
Basically means we can possibly time travel now
+byRamzy don't see how gravity has anything to do with time travel but OK.....
+Lyle Mitchell (Nortio) The biggest one beyond anti-gravity would be harnessing these waves and creating free energy.
+Peter G OK that makes sense. a lot more than time travel. awesome
154 Newtonians
Its really an exotic and astonishing discovery, which can freeze you for moments !
One word to say "Hats off, Guys "
thanks to all the people involved that dedicated their lives to let us understand the universe
Why would anyone dislike this video?
Uninteresting people?
Dumb blonde girls that think the waves will mess up their hair
+steveis1234 lmao
+steveis1234 XD
Most likely flat earthers
Further proof that Einstein was one of the greatest men to ever walk this Earth.
They didn't detect anything, they just pulled a slippery slope.
It just gave me goosebumps....
Oh man, what a wonderful time to live in. First the higgs boson, and now gravitational waves. Looking forward to seing what's next. :)
This reminds us how intelligent Einstein was.His theory of general relativity is proven right.Guy's dont you think Einstein is a man from future?
.
+Faizal Evans That'd explain how smart he was, but we'll never know and saying that can bring out a whole bag of conspiracy theorists
he was a jew. that's why he could figure it out. We'd all be in the dark ages if not for the jews.
+Hatch Jerod
Thank you for the insight.
Also, I'd like to point out if Muslims didn't exist then we wouldn't even have algebra, so basically if not for the Muslims Einstein wouldn't even be known right now.
We can discuss the piggybacking method on a different page. Shouldn't clutter this one. Just name the page.
alijahshad02 just playing homeslice,
The Muslims have definitely had their golden age, as well as the jews under Saul, David, and Solomon. And the egyptians, And the Chinese have had theirs, as well as the Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs who also used algebra as well. God allowed the Muslims to be the smart ones in the right place at the right time.
All of those days are over. The state of the world exactly matches what Jesus said the world would be like before his return (Matthew 24 and Luke 21).
Well probably Zakir Naik is now searching word in his quran to make a claim that quran already saying this 1400 years ago more longer than Einstein
"Albert Einstein said about gravitational relativity in 1916 that finally detect by LIGO now 2016....BUT I CAN TELL YOU BROTHER SISTER THAT QURAN ALREADY SAID THIS 1400 YEARS AGO! SURAT BAQRA CHAPTER NUMBER 6 VERSE NUMBER 9!"
Ligo detected a gravitational wave and i detected a chutiya......
😂😂😂👍
So awesome can't wait to see what the future holds
Congratulations to all who made this happen. Cheers!
What progress has religion gave us so far?
Nothing but blood bloody murder
Its not what has religion contributed, but when is science gonna catch up with the Authentic values and revelations
thet have stood the test of time in religions/spiritual forms.....Quantum mech...we affect what our awareness focuses upon..."what you think so ye are?...
...........reckon the earths conditions and Capitalism
............................................................. are the direct affects of our collective thinkin?
Genocide
I'm so happy God put these things for us to discover. Makes me smile seeing us all so happy in the midst of a hellish world.
Ever wonder why this world is hellish?
+Colin Vecera cuz sin
Faith in humanity restored.
+Radi Bear (Radioactive TeddyBear) Because of religion, you half-wit
RemixedVoice I agree somewhat, but look at your comment again. Seems a bit hypocritical, don't you think?
That's MIT you got there! Congrats you guys :D
from Philippines
It is one of the best experiments ever done to prove the theoretical physics of gravitational waves in space-time by human beings. It will open a new era of discoveries. CALTECH & MIT researchers, thank you for having the vision to design, and build high-precision interferometers and to perform such measurements.
I love discovering God's work. :)
+General Sarasota i love hating idiots
Me too
but you cant make a comment like this on any science channel without the heathens bearing down.
Feel the intelligent pull, too? RAmen.
EHW2 Yeah people like René Plougsgaard will always express evil.
+Wenguang Jiang I love your comment
The horribly affected music undermines the credibility of these conclusions. Use of music to elicit an emotional reaction and dissuade critical examination is a cheap parlor trick and calls into question the judgment of these scientists.
Well, I never said the scientists personally played and recorded the music (but the video was nonetheless produced by MIT).
Respectfully, I think your comment demonstrates my point. Your "gtfo …" comment suggests you are offended by my criticism and observation, no doubt because of your emotional attachment to the subject matter of this video.
But a fundamental element of the Scientific Method is that, through publication, the findings can be subject to criticism and vetted through the crucible of peer review. This serves, among other things, to eliminate any biases that may have influenced the results. One of the invaluable things about Science is that Scientific Theories are as objective as humanly possible.
Scientists welcome new viewpoints and Science itself demands criticism. That's because the ultimate goal of Science is to find the truth. If someone criticized the findings in a technical way (as in, hypothetically speaking, "The data analysis does not properly account for statistical deviations observed in prior optical Michelson-Morley type experiments") a proponent wouldn't say "gtfo." Rather, a good scientist might dismiss such a criticism by explaining how it was considered or perhaps accept the criticism and reexamine the data. If wrong about something, a scientist might naturally feel upset about it but could still take comfort that, because of her efforts, Science is closer to the truth. And it's a good thing that the accuracy of Scientific discoveries does not depend on any scientist's susceptibility to being offended.
Of course, my criticism of the music is not a criticism of any of the science behind these findings. (I think that's what makes it funny.) And I understand that this video is more of a PR piece than a formal scientific presentation.
Nonetheless, I believe that all scientists (generally) and MIT (specifically in this case) owe a special duty of care when communicating scientific discoveries to the public.
Scientific understanding of the nature of the Universe greatly impacts each and every one of us in countless ways. Indeed, science has changed the world. With this in mind, communications to the public should reflect how indispensable objectivity is to science. And such communications should further reflect that any particular conclusions being presented were reached as objectively as possible.
The musical soundtrack to this video flies in the face of objectivity. Actually, the very purpose of music in film is to illicit an emotional response and enhance the subjective experience of the viewer. Filmmakers and composers are fully aware of the manipulative power of music, which is why it is such an effective tool in their creative process. In a way, the use of music in film is to Create bias - the exact opposite of Science's aim to Eliminate bias. Therefore, scientists (and people speaking in their behalf) should be exceedingly careful about using music in scientific communications to the public to avoid any suggestion that the viewers are being manipulated into a particular point of view.
Plus, this particular music is just bad. It's just some kind of superficial, feel-good, and pretentious fluff. There's nothing creative or interesting or complex in it's composition. The arrangement is typical. The production is boring and polished. There's a higher level of musical accomplishment in the "sound" of the gravitational waves themselves.
Let me just add one more thing, just to be clear: I'm perfectly ok with scientists who use interpretative dance when engaging with the public.
beautiful theory, beautiful work. Expecting more events.
10/16/2017 historic day today. so awesome
hehehe FUCK NASA and LEGO
Lustration well let's see you find the only fucking thing in the universe that can MOVE AND STRETCH the universe other than itself...
Einstein was not human, impossible, think it was sent to give a direction to human. As? I imagine and I detail one thing never seen and she really exists...
what a marvelous video. Kudos to Mankind!
I would love to see another vid with a good explanation of how measuring this waves will help know the history of the universe? I cant imagine how awesome it was to read the data about the blackholes collision!!!
No they didn't.
What I wonder though is: What are the implications of this?
I don't like to be a cynic but this discovery doesn't seem that important to me, at least theory-wise. It only confirmed our current understanding of the universe, not expanded it.
+Spliter i got this comment from reddit, user /astrokiwi
Two big things!Firstly, General Relativity has always predicted that gravitational waves should exist. However, they are very weak, and even the most sensitive detectors should only detect the most dramatic ones - the "chirp" of gravitational waves that comes from the merger of two neutron stars, or even better, two black holes.Recently, the LIGO detectors have been upgraded so that they finally have the sensitivity to detect the strongest of gravitational waves. And a few months ago, both sets of detectors (one in Louisiana, one in Washington state) detected a chirp of gravitational waves, fitting exactly the pattern of frequencies you'd expect from the merger of two black holes about a billion light years away with a mass of about 30x our Sun each.This detection is a massive confirmation of General Relativity. It would be worrying if we didn't detect anything, but this really confirms that our understanding of gravity and the universe is correct.Secondly, this opens up an entirely new field of observational astronomy. Astronomy works mostly through telescopes that observe different types of light waves - visible light, infrared, x-rays, radio waves, etc. But gravitational waves are an entirely different thing, and they give us a wholly new point of view on the universe, letting us see things we couldn't see otherwise.For example, something that's 30x the mass of our Sun is a pretty small object to see at a distance of a billion light years! Black holes are also really really small (these are like 90 km across). So we detected something less than 100 km across that was a billion light years away! And that's something that would be pretty much impossible to do with any other current method.It really is a wholly new window into the universe.
www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/459boe/eli5_why_is_todays_announcement_of_the_discovery/
In my humble and respectful point of view, this discovery is important because, as you said, it confirms that the knowledge we had about this was correct. Can you imagine being wrong? Can imagine needing to create new theories like this? I mean, I don't think that happens every day.
+Spliter I think it's important that the theory in and of itself was confirmed, as we know that general relativity is (as far as we can measure) correct. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a good thing. Practically, this discovery welcomes a new era of research via gravitational waves. More thought and money will now be put into experiments and projects based on the idea now that it is confirmed.
No one knew what made gravity tick before this discovery. Surprisingly enough, it's one of the least well known fundamental forces in the Universe. Now we know for sure that gravity acts like a wave. It's huge news.
It will give us a basis on how to make FTL transport, no joke
Whole new thing to learn now....lots of work.....great!!!
What a great time to be alive.
Felicitaciones, ustedes me hacen sentir muy feliz. Saludos de Chile!!!!!
I have been perceiving the entire universe as one thing for a very longtime. I perceive it as a large sea so to speak. A sea where certain places are more dense than others but everything is still liquid. Often I learn something that increases the probability of my theory; today is one of those days. thx.
we need a documentary for this, like higg boson's particle fever
In the video it was mentioned that you release gravitational waves and then detect their effect on the light and all that was explained was that a special laser and mirrors were constructed but they didn't talk about what is emitting these gravitational waves. How are they releasing or emitting gravitational waves in order to detect their effect on the light from the laser?
it's a memorial moment , it opens our eyes to new side of universe
Sounds like a wonderful bit of science. Very cool
My question is would it be possible to build a small more sensitive detector parked in a Lagrange point essentially outside of gravitational influence?
Absolutely well done and definitely keep it up!!! 👍👍👍👍👍
Amazing how it is possible to make a video about gravitational waves, without telling anything about what such a wave is, and how it can be detected.
Roll a canon ball in a circle on a sheet of cloth. Wave like moments are created from the content pushing and pulling off the canon Ball. Now scale it to a Massive black hole rotating around another massive black hole on the fabric of space. The waves generated from this movement are the gravitational movement.
They are detected based on the general theory of relativity.
@@420sakura1 A sheet of cloth is pure matter, and we have no information from any detectors that indicate that gravity is something material. Nor can we register a wave based on a theory. Unfortunately, this is an easy conclusion, like so much else within the scientific belief system, where it is important to present the belief as proof, without there being any proof. I am not saying that a wave was not detected, but what I am saying is that we do not know that it was a gravitational wave.
Duuuude props to funding this for 21 years....
This is so incredible! 🌌✨
congratulations. what a heroic achievement.
Congratulations!!!
A question... Do gravity waves make the LIGO light waves go out of phase with each other or are the light waves oscillating between very small red and blue shifts?
FYI: I teach orchestra and want to come up with accurate analogies for my students to understand how LIGO is using waves to detect gravity and it sounds to me that the gravity waves are causing the different rays of light waves to create something that in music would be analogous to oscillating difference tones (combination tones) when two frequencies are created simultaneously (i.e. play 440Hz and 442Hz and they create a 2Hz wave is created). I'd really love it if someone could correct and/or clarify my understanding of how LIGO works in this regard. Thanks!
Damn this brought tears to my eyes for some reason. It's like the Universe is singing a song to us and its the first time we're hearing her voice. It's beautiful.
This is a profound discovery. Science and the Universe get re-defined again! #bravo
Awesome! Kudos to our scientists, experimentalists and of course Mr. Einstein. It's inceptions to study, opening up a new horizon. Nice video, and what great Indian background music to complement it.
Does anyone know the source of background soundtracks played in this video ???
If time travel is possible I'm going back with all this info and giving it to the greatest minds.
I am honored to be alive to witness this amazing discovery! HI everyone from the future!
Now make it longer!
5:01 music please? anyone know the name
They showed a clip of audio. how voice travel through vacuum? Why not they detected graviton existence?
This is so amazing!
wow, was watching this video on my phone and the news just aired on tv.
Got a theoretical question and it is how fast would a spaceship near the black hole collision be able to travel on those gravitational waves? I guess I'm thinking like a surfer on a big wave. Also what happens to space rocks like meteors in nearby systems, would their motion be affected?
I got misty eyed when I watched this.
so, does each mass have its own characteristic frequency? you should have more than rare gravity wave spotting, stationary waves
Congrats !
Very inspirational
I'm wondering what the technological difficulties were. The tools and methods they used seem fairly simple... was it the demand for such high precision that was so costly? fascinating stuff, this is such great news!
+Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): How much precise must be the construction, I mean 4km is not short, what is the tolerance level in 90degree angle between the limbs of L shape? Can the limbs be longer? does the slight curvature of earth has any effect? Is there any specific direction along which LIGO must be oriented?
+Pronoy De Hey, maybe you already found answers to your questions, but if not, I can provide the answers to some of them.
For your first question, I do not know anything in particular about a tolerance level of the angle, but I can say that the arms consist of several shorter, very precisely constructed parts that had to be welded together.
The limbs can be longer, in fact an increase of length is extremely helpful. The amplitude of a gravitational wave decides how high the proportional change in length of an object is going to be. Therefore, if you have two really long arms, the absolute length difference between the two arms will also be really big in comparison to the length difference of smaller arms. This results in a heavier phase shift of the two laser beams and ultimately a stronger signal on the photo detector.
The curvature of earth does have an effect. In fact, when LIGO was under construction, Rainer Weiss (the guy who came up with the idea of laser interferometry) woke up drenched in sweat one night as he realized this. Afterwards, he tested how heavy the effect was going to be by telling someone to shine a light exactly through the center of one end of the arm. At the other end, it appeared slightly shifted towards the top. To fix this problem, one of the ends was simply mounted higher above the ground than the other.
I don't think there's a specific direction along which LIGO must be oriented, at least not when you look at one observatory in particular. Relative to the second observatory, however, the first observatory must be aligned in a particular way so that the direction the gravitational wave came from can be determined.
Does anyone know whether the press conference is available somewhere on the net? I missed the first 50 minutes :[
Such a great discovery. Makes me to love science even more.