“There are no gravitational waves … ” … “Plane gravitational waves, traveling along the positive X-axis, can therefore be found … ” … “ … gravitational waves do not exist … ” … “Do gravitational waves exist?” … “It turns out that rigorous solutions exist … ” These are the words of Albert Einstein. For 20 years he equivocated about gravitational waves, unsure whether these undulations in the fabric of space and time were predicted or ruled out by his revolutionary 1915 theory of general relativity. For all the theory’s conceptual elegance-it revealed gravity to be the effect of curves in “space-time”-its mathematics was enormously complex. The question was settled once and for all last week, when

Now that we have had some time to think about LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves, there are a few interesting comments I can make about it. Gravitational waves don’t have to be useful There is a common question that comes up in media whenever there is a new scientific discovery-“What can you do with it (gravitational waves)?” Can you build an anti-gravity machine? Could you use this to build a warp drive? These are all great ideas, but they miss the point. We don’t study gravitational waves so that we can make stuff. We study gravitational waves because we want to understand gravitational waves. I think that Richard Feynman said it best: “Physics is like sex: Sure, it might give some practical

1、引力波不必有用（Gravitational waves don’t have to be useful）

2、LIGO检测并未证明引力波存在（The LIGO detection didn’t prove the existence of gravitational waves）

3、没有改进的LIGO是检测不到引力波信号的（LIGO probably wouldn’t have detected this signal without Advanced LIGO）

4、NSF对LIGO进行了重大投资（The National Science Foundation made a significant investment in LIGO）

5、有计划在太空检测引力波（There are plans to put a gravitational wave detector in space）

6、或可用射电望远镜测量低频引力波（You can probably measure low frequency gravitational waves with a radio telescope.）