TK
This observatory in Hanford, Washington, just made one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the decade. NASA.GOV

Several years ago, Charles Mudede visited Hanford, Washington and reported back: "This has to be one of the strangest places on earth. The number of contradictions forced to exist together here—the Tri-Cities, the Hanford Site, the Horse Heaven Hills, the Columbia Basin—just boggles the mind." The contradictions included radioactive leaks from the nuclear facility amid pristine land, and physicists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) living among farmers.

Today, those contradictions bore fruit and I can barely contain my excitement because the science is so ridiculously awesome. LIGO has detected gravitational waves, whose existence Albert Einstein predicted decades ago. The waves were generated by the collision of two black holes roughly one billion years ago. They were detected by shooting lasers in an L-shape and bouncing them off mirrors—then assessing whether they cancelled each other out or if the lasers were off by a fraction of the length of a single sub-atomic proton. If they were off—not just in Hanford, but also in an identical facility in Louisiana—then the existence of the waves could be proved.

This spine-tingling New York Times video explains what the hell is going on. I highly recommend you watch it:

The Times profiles the scientists who bet their careers on proving Einstein right, noting that the discovery required $1.1 billion in funding over more than 40 years.

What might this discovery portend? According to the Tri-City Herald:

Being able to detect and measure waves should advance knowledge of astronomy and physics. New information on the nature of time and space and the creation of the universe could be revealed.

Craving more details? Here's the peer-reviewed scientific paper from the observatory scientists.