What could be better than being a part of a discovery capable of revolutionizing the entire astronomy field? Penn State assistant professor of physics Chad Hanna considers himself lucky for being part of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) team that found direct evidence of Einstein’s gravitational waves.

Exactly 100 years ago, Einstein had predicted in his theory of general relativity that gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of space-time which propagate as waves. That time, the genius scientists had indirect evidence to show the presence of mysterious waves. The LIGO research team, which included Hanna as a researcher, first detected the gravitational wave signal in September last year.

The Penn State researcher said the LIGO team was working on the project since a long time. They prepared for many years to make such kind of incredible discovery, as per the researcher. “Like others on the team, I should have been woken up in the middle of the night when LIGO heard that first gravitational wave — but it was so early in the run that I hadn’t even had a chance to enable my text message alerts”, Chad Hanna said. The researcher came to know about the GW150914 event when he walked to campus some hours after a signal of gravitational wave was detected by LIGO researchers.

The professor found out in September last year that the ripples in space-time have been discovered, but kept it secret for various reasons. It is never easy to keep something secret that can make you feel awesome, but Hanna had to keep it a secret.

According to Hanna, every researcher at LIGO thought the gravitational wave signal was just a test signal, but they later found that no tests had been performed. It was a moment when nobody uttered a word and kept silent for many months, said the researcher.