re: Gravitational Waves....ongoing discussion today

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I can’t read a paragraph about anything going on in space without blacking out and drooling on myself. It’s not out of boredom...because I am truly interested in understanding this stuff. I feel like I’m too dumb to understand any of it. The scientist trying to explain it to me is equivalent to me trying to explain binary options to a sloth at the zoo.

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My undergrad was in Physics/Astronomy and I wound up deciding to go into finance once I found out how much money a postdoc makes. So don't worry, you'll do much better financially.

That said, I can tell you this is much more than pure theory. You don't have to physically go there either, you learn lots by just watching. But you have to know what to look for.

For example, the specific frequencies of the emitted light tell lots about what elements are present, which is how they know the merger created lots of heavy metals (gold, platinum, etc). That technique (spectroscopy) is used right here on Earth for many purposes in industry.