Could LIGO Find MASSIVE Alien Spaceships?

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Whenever we open a new window on the universe, we discover things that no one expected. Our newfound ability to measure ripples in the fabric of spacetime—gravitational waves—is a very new window, and so far we’ve seen a lot of wild stuff. We’ve observed black holes colliding, and their oddly high masses challenges our understanding of black hole formation and growth. We’ve seen colliding neutron stars that have forced us to rewrite our ideas of how many of the elements of the periodic table get made. But what else might be hiding in the ripples’ of spacetime? Oh, I know: how about the gravitational wakes caused by planet-sized alien spacecraft accelerating to near light speed.

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd

Written by Matt Caplan & Matt O'Dowd

Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, & Stephanie Faria

Directed by Andrew Kornhaber

Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour

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Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez

Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing

Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell

Spacetime is produced by Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.

This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.

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End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg

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