business news live from berlin alex a number of remain behind bars a court sentences the russian opposition leader to more than 3 years in a penal colony the judge found involving guilty of violating the terms of his probation while he was in germany recovering from a near fatal poison attack on the supporters are calling for more protests in the russian capital also coming up good news in the fight against the president make scientists say russia sputnik the vaccine is safe and effective they can't cope

with 19 promising trial results were published in the british medical journal the lancet. and the u.k. warns its oldest coronavirus hero after raising millions of pounds for frontline workers centenary and world war 2 veteran captain tom moore loses his own battle against cope with 19. i mean call for a wish good to have you with us we begin in moscow where opposition leader alex a no vote he has been sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison me was detained last month for violating the terms of his probation he allegedly failed to check in with authorities while he was in germany recovering from a near fatal poisoning which he blames on the kremlin today's ruling has sparked widespread protests 100. of arrests and an international outcry for the digital

future is a truth that we must heart for his wife you are. the only goodbye alexei navalny could manage before heading to prison earlier he told the court the charges against him were fabricated a way of intimidating his supporters. who go to work all of these officers and this cage it's not a show of strength it shows their weakness they are weak. and they cannot jail thousands or even millions of people. outside the cavalry arrived early. lines of riot police stood in front of the court not to keep the inn but to keep his supporters out. as the day progressed police detained hundreds of nirvana supporters would come to show their solidarity. age was no barrier this woman stood her

ground in defiance. as night fell on moscow the protests grew. but so did the presence of police in riot gear and the arrests. the tension is a price these protesters are willing to pay to speak their mind. we're going to go to i don't want my children to grow up in the same conditions i did alex say is trying to do something at least you know bali has just been wrongly convicted the country will never be free if this ortiz and the courts behave like this it looks like they will soon start beating us with a baton but we came out so that our children won't be beaten with batons in the future. soon enough the police proved him right. there are tons directed

indiscriminately at anyone in the crowd. on the phone these supporters are taking risks in the hope that the next generation one tattoo. earlier i spoke about the international impact of this ruling with dr benjamin l. schmidt who is a transatlantic security analyst base and camp massachusetts i asked him how the international community in germany in particular should handle the situation and i think it is really long since passed the time for berlin to give up political support of north stream to we saw the french government come out and call on berlin to abandon the project yesterday last week the european parliament and a 581250 basis call for this project to be stopped and we've seen in the case of nordstrom too that there really is a direct connection between what the kremlin does kremlin who operates in owns gas problem which supports and is advancing north room to answer to corruption we see former chancellor gerhard schroeder's on the board of gas prom and the current

c.e.o. of the project is the former reportedly star the officer mathias barney that was specifically named in mr involve these own recent anti corruption video describing the sort of characters that are in putin's orbit of corruption so i think that a key area that washington brussels need to jointly address is this drowned this trend of authoritarian regimes weaponize in critical infrastructure develop developments and in authoritarian economic deals in emerging technologies to challenge western liberal democratic institutions and that's why we need science and technology analysis paired with traditional political and economic analysis that we can do that the damage of these projects and see how they can they can be mitigated both technologically and in terms of export ng strategic corruption how to stop that in the trans-atlantic community. dr benjamin l. schmidt there but there's also more positive news coming out of russia the country's sputnik vico vaccine as around 92 percent effective that's according to

a new study published in the british medical journal the lancet the findings are based on data from a trial involving some 20000 people researchers also found no serious side effects associated with its use the russian vaccine consists of 2 common cold viruses that have been modified to carry the corona virus the cyc protein can be stored at up to decrease celsius making it easier to transport then the biotech pfizer vaccine. meanwhile countries across the european union are scrambling to ramp up their immunization campaigns and criticism over slow progress last month for example belgium announced a new vaccination strategy that would allow it to move more quickly we wanted to know how the rollout is progressing there our brussels correspondent went to find out for me it takes just 6 seconds to shorten the arm that could save

a life. here in belgium as for those trucks a nation sent of from blood workers including doctors dentists the nurses about 50 years old are receiving the blood donor covert 1000 vaccine general britishness are next in line after care home residents and hospital staff so for belgium's immunization complaint seems slow and steady but vaccinators here say things could go much faster well the biggest challenge is always receiving enough exceeds today we can only fox news 150 people. 5 days a week because we don't know we didn't receive any more vaccines of them that are good is to be able to vaccinate 900 people every day 7 days a week so far no one here knows when more vaccines will be delivered people wait half an hour after the injection in case of allergic reactions this general practitioner just received his 1st dose for him it's all about patients.

i don't think it's very slow because. the mother effect is different the be careful of the people who. are actually the numbers for that reason that you have the impression it's very slow but to a single organization that is very good after the jump immunity levels build up over a couple of weeks but it's straight back to work for general practitioner of the christie likewise if you know the business community it's safe for now but no reason to do something silly no. keep your mosque and your distance that's her message in 4 weeks she'll be back for her 2nd dose. in a small country badly hit by the corona virus the hope is the vaccination of her subway ahead let's now take a look at some of the other stories making headlines around the world. crowds

and myanmar's largest city and gone the banks on top and pants and hong car forms and the 1st line spread protest against the country's military coup the demonstrators call for the release of detained leader and son suchi and the recognition of her victory and november's election. police and istanbul have detained dozens of people after forcefully to solving a student protest turkey has seen a month of mass demonstrations against a decision by president project type air to want to name a party loyalist as the head of it stumbles prestigious but was a change university institution have been known as the bastion of liberal thought. u.s. president biden has paid his respects to slain police officer brian sick nick he lies in honor at the capitol where he and other officers were attacked by a violent mob on january 6 sigma died from his injuries the next day former

president donald trump faces the senate trial charged with inciting the right. amazon founder jeff bezos is giving up his role as c.e.o. of the company and moving to the role of executive chair in the 3rd quarter of 2021 and a note to employees bezos said he will stay engaged in important company decisions but he plans to focus more of his time on side projects such as his space exploration company his newspaper the washington post and this charities will be replaced by jesse who runs out his odds cloud business well for more on the surprise announcement let's bring in d.w. financial correspondent gets culture from new york this comes as the company reports a surge in 4th quarter profit and revenue why is bezos choosing to step down now. yeah maybe it's the best time to leave or to give over the helm when

a business is strongest for the 1st time ever in amazon's history they had a quarterly revenue of more than $100000000000.00 actually it was about $125000000000.00 but clearly a move that hardly anybody saw coming on wall street just being so founded amazon and $994.00 rumor has it that he had the idea for amazon when he drove by car from new york to his parents in seattle well he had enough time to think about something during that journey and to transform timer's into one of the most successful and powerful companies on the planet and he himself became one of the richest persons on earth but definitely a pretty surprising move and in about 6 months he will give over the helm to andy jesse what can you tell us about. who is he now well i mean he joined them isn't in 1997 so also one of the early employees

from that company and in the past couple of years he was responsible for the vastly growing cloud computing business a w. s. what we do not know clearly is some how his management style might change if he has different priorities than jeff bezos. but he definitely is not unknown to the employees he's by the way in his early fifty's so a tiny bit younger than just pesos. a 2nd test flight by space x.'s latest starship prototype has ended in a fireball the stainless steel rocket managed a successful takeoff at high altitude test in texas but went up in flames on landing the last prototype met a similar fate in december and a webcast of the latest launch the company said it had a great flight but still needed to quote work on their landing

a little bit. this man captain sir tom moore walked his way into the hearts of a nation as he raised money for u.k. health care professionals on the front line in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic now the world war 2 veteran has died at the age of 100 after contracting the virus himself through 2 other medication he was taking he had been eligible to get vaccinated against it. during the 1st wave of the coronavirus pandemic captain tom morris set out to raise 1000 pounds for britain's national health service by walking 100 laps of his backyard before his 100th birthday his quest went viral and donations poured in from around the world totaling some 33000000 pounds more told d.w. how stunned he was. absolutely amazing amounts of money as

the roads and so on all made the closers there's a really good one from 2 sources they are. using by the arrival of his centennial birthday captain tom was an international celebrity. he wrote an autobiography which he dedicated to all those who serve on the front line of any battle. at windsor castle queen elizabeth the 2nd knighted him for what he did accomplish with his walks. his sunny attitude during the pandemic has inspired people to look beyond their illness and loss. will. include those people well. it is. but i would say to everyone. things will get

there's no doubt that wrong. onto the drugs so i. go on. watching t w news life from berlin aspect of the documentary to the big bang so terry martin have more headlines for you at the top of the hour for me and the entire newsroom here thanks for tuning. and you hear me now oh yes we don't need you and i last year's german chancellor when you bring your uncle a math course and you've never cut have surprise yourself with what is possible who is medical really what a new sat and what somebody who talked to people who follows her along the way maurice and critics of life joiners the metals lifestyle.

ever since the early days of humanity we have gazed in or at the starry sky and asked what awaits us out there. technological progress has given us more on sirs than we could ever have dreamed yet with every step towards understanding and every from t.o. we cross the universe presents us with new mistress. is undergoing this as a golden age for astronomy and our exploration of the universe it's never been so exciting but everything we learn tells us there's a lot more we don't know yet it's got the design ways of looking which are open to virtually all sorts of things you have thought of the idea to do that how do you look for something. this is a story about the search for the unknown and about the people working to solve its mysteries it's safe to say that it's a success story because it will end with us or understanding our universe and its

wonders a little bit better. and all thanks to a short in conspicuous signal from the depths of space that found its way to earth at just the right moment a signal that made astronomers around the world sit up and listen. it began with a drama of cosmic proportions at a distance of 1300000000 light years 2 black holes was spiraling toward one another each was many times more massive than our sun. finally they collided we have and it was so violent that it released waves of enormous energy gravitational waves these then sped through space over

a way to where they were detected in september 25th dean. what we would have done is opened a new field of astronomy that's what's so important and we're now using gravitational waves and as he's looking at the universe of a completely new way as well as guns it was tremendously exciting for the 1st time we'd heard the universe not just seen it it was definitely one of the discoveries of the century and. the sensational discovery took place in the east of washington state in the u.s. the desert area is home to one of 2 american gravitational wave detectors called my go it shaped like the letter l with a kilometer long arms it was these arms and the laser beams inside them that enabled the signal to be detected in 2015. david shoemaker helped

build my go the physicist is giving us a rare glimpse inside the heart of what is arguably the world's most sensitive measuring device. for inside one of the people to cover which is where the things for light travels to detect gravitational radiation the thing we're looking at right here is the being to the self it's about a meter in diameter and spend that famous steel crevice and why. about 4 millimeters thick but the idea is to have an extremely good vacuum so when the flavor of light travels along the 4 kilometers it's not disturbed by any hair. in technical terms it's called a laser interferometer each of the detectors arms is exactly 4 kilometers long where they meet a laser beam and split and shot down both arms some of. it functions a bit like a gigantic ruler. the past laser light along the

tip of to measure the distance very precisely between 2 mirrors that are 4 kilometers apart and very precisely i mean 2.0000000000000001 of a meter and if any molecules of air pass through that being and causes a very small shift in the distance what we're doing inside these tubes is removing all of that air so that effect is at a completely that logical level for the measurements that when you can make and the only thing that should change the path length between these 2 mirrors is a passive gravitational way. but how can this giant laser ruler on earth pick up signals from deep in space. the answer lies in the nature of the signals. the 2 black holes spun around each other faster and faster and eventually merged the energy waves that were treated was so enormous that they changed the space

around them. very similar to what a way what a wave is transfers meaning it does it's up and down motion of the water perpendicular the direction in which it moves it's very much the same except in this case it go it stretches space in one direction in which it moves but and then it contracts space in the other and that viral reverses. for a while it's extracting space this way contract in space that a little bit later it's compressing paste this way and stretching space advocates alternating between those 2 things you don't need any more than that to understand what how you detect the waves. nor what they really are. for 1300000000 years these gravitational waves traveled through space before reaching. here too they compressed and stretched space. we could notice the change but the detector could for a brief instant the waves change the length of light goes arms. as

a gravitational wave passes it squeezes this arm and stretches the storm and then squeezes the strawman stretches this far what we do is we measure the time for the light to take this path 1st is the time to take this path and we see if there is a difference it could be to program attritional way the detector is so sensitive that even the smallest of earth quakes is registered as a signal in the line go control room. even stuff from the far away beach is displayed here both of these to rest real disturbances make isolating a signal that's actually coming from spags a huge challenge for the scientists. at the beginning of the existence of these 2 objects they're turning around each other extremely slowly billions of years of 1st person or so but by the time they get

into a frequency range where our instruments are sensitive and we can get above the frequencies where seismic noise is completely dominant for us and they're already into this range which is close to human hearing so something like look that's the kind of sound that you get if you take this of electrical signal and you put it through an amplifier into a loud speaker of the oven required to pick up that tiny is enormous but the payback is what such signals can tell us about because most gravitational waves allow us to explore parts of the universe that no telescope or space probe could ever reach but simply they teach us about the great us. known. to amitava the shots you don't they give us the chance to hear from the dark side

of the universe isn't gore and we now know that over 99 percent of the universe is dark and will probably never be detectable with any kind of electromagnetic waves but we also know that everything is subject to gravity and any object subject to gravity that moves makes gravitational waves or for. managing black holes colliding neutron stars stars that explode into supernovas the most violent the events and the more massive the objects involved the stronger the gravitational waves a generate. black holes are so massive that they devour everything that approaches to collapse so when 2 of them come light a gigantic amount of energy is released gravitational waves carry information about such cosmic events out into space and once they're on their way nothing in the universe can stop them. it doesn't matter whether there is dust there or doesn't

matter if there's radiating plasma there we look right through it that's what that means we can look through everything we may even look at the very moment that the universe god created fat may happen not now probably 30 years from now we will be able to do experiments that that look at the gravitational radiation that came from the instant. that the universe got formed in the big bang. there's no greater cosmic events than the birth of the universe itself gravitational waves could be the key to finally understanding the big bang. no wonder that scientists have dreamed for decades about one day being able to measure these waves. the drama of the whole thing really starts in 1915 with i'll bet albert einstein who had come up with this new theory of gravity

which was now has a name called general relativity. albert einstein is probably the most famous physicist in history with his research in revolutionized the concept of universal physical laws one of einstein's greatest contributions was a completely new way of viewing gravity. now is the track of kind of tough according to einstein gravity isn't a force it's a property of space it arises from the fact that everything makes little dents in space everything else then moves through this curved space and through these depressions take the moon for example or the moon is always moving around the earth in a sort of groove you can't imagine it in 4 dimensions but take something a lastic like a rubber sheet and the last issue of all what the earth on it and it makes it a question of the moon is always rolling around like a roulette ball and this depression is. ringback ringback the greater an object's

mass the bigger the dent it makes in space in other words the bigger its gravitational field according to einstein if these objects are accelerated to high speeds it should create waves of curvature has in the fabric of space. the faces there is predicted the existence of gravitational waves more than 100 years ago. but einstein never quite trusted the theory that it's clear he changed his mind at least 5 times throughout his life over whether gravitational waves existed at all why because he did what a good scientist does after he made the theory he sat down and put numbers there he put in for the masses he knew and how many there were and what happened he found out that it would be such a tiny little infinitesimal effect at the gravitational waves make that it will never play a role in physics. a computer model shows just how small the effect is take an

atom one of the world's tiny building blocks. then zoom in to observe a proton in its nuclear and even smaller units. only on that scale can you see the spatial bending coast by a passing gravitational. but how do you simply didn't have the means to detect something like that 100 years ago when i predicted gravitational waves as the technology only came half a century later and even then it took another half century and till we could actually measure such small changes and now it's almost routine 1st latina. it's precisely this technology that is being researched by the max planck society at the albert einstein institute in hanover its director cast and dance man is one

of the leading gravitational wave researchers in germany. together with an international team of scientists he developed a laser system that's at the heart of the u.s. why go detectors it was key to the successful gravitational wave measurement in 2015. the lasers were tested in the countryside a few kilometers outside hanover. places the geo $600.00 germany's only gravitational wave detector. within arm's length of 600 meters it's much smaller than its american counterparts but it's still constant dance man's pride and joy back in the 1990 s. he campaigned for the construction of the laser interferometer here today geo 600 is one of the most important testing stations in this research field. the the interferometers with arms several kilometers long just sit there and listen you

can't think or with them or at least it's done as little as possible but if you want to develop things you have to constantly tweak the instruments installment of e.d.s. that's why you need something like this and then if it all works convincingly that the technology is transferred and incorporated into the big data detectors. there's a unique atmosphere here at the site. from the outside the detector appears plain and in conspicuous like an ordinary installation there's little hint of the impressive things it's capable of the stand your show you stand here looking across the fields is the sun is shining it's very peaceful then you imagine how out in the universe 2 black holes have collided with each other and then a 1000000000 years later the signal arrives here you don't notice anything but the space under your feet trembles and are instruments buried in the ground registers

and that's a great feeling of. 100 years that went down to this moment would ever come. and for nearly the 1st half of that time it was believed to be technically impossible. that began to change in the late 1950 s. . what happened is a people began to look at the einstein theory all over again and they went to the statement that einstein had said look this is impossible to measure and they realize now maybe it's not the technology had changed. one of the then new technologies now looks like a prop from an old science fiction film. but this is actually the world's 1st attempt a building

a gravitational wave detector. operators was invented by faces there is joseph weber at the university of maryland. who was a very. joseph weber was both a pioneer and in the end maybe quite a tragic figure he certainly led the way in experimental gravitational wave research anywhere in the world and the idea that he had was. to look at what a gravitational well does to a great big piece of metal like a huge bar huge piece of metal and what it does to that metal and the gravitational wave comes along it stretches it a little bit and then it's gone again at the blog continues to vibrate just like a bell keeps resenting after it's been struck or that vibration was what he wanted to detect line. in theory it was a brilliant idea but in practice it proved to be a major challenge for webb and his team for the cylinder to be sensitive enough to

detect gravitational waves its atoms had to be frozen into a state of almost complete rest so the team built the device in a vacuum chamber and cooled it down. in the 1960 s. several such gravitational wave antennas later known as boss were built according to this principle. weapon you need several independent measurements to prove that his experiment worked as planned. and then came the miracle. and what he began to see was something that was were actually world shaking absolutely world shaking and by 969 he published a paper saying that he had discovered gravitational waves. that's a fact the guns are making it was met with a lot of skepticism theoretician soon realized that

a signals were actually far too strong if the sources were so intense that he could detect them with his weber bar than most of our milky way would have been destroyed by gravitational waves long ago with that kind of energy. it only took a glance at the night sky to know everything was still hunky dorey with a milky way but weber's work had an impact as far as go for it also wasn't immediately clear that he was wrong if you are going after people began to wonder how strong such gravitational waves could actually be because at the time it was all unknown so researchers began to duplicate these experiments to try to verify them severely feeds the news of weapons supposed success also reached the max planck society in germany at the institute for astrophysics outside munich they did . cited to reproduce the cylinder experiment and they had just the right person for the job experimental physicist heinz billing the only thing was he didn't really

have much experience with astrophysics. building help making computers and do innovations with computers that allowed the people and the astrophysics institute there to be able to make large scale computations in astrophysics and spelling was a pioneer at a time when computers still took up entire rooms his achievements in the field of electronics were groundbreaking. and he was known as a rigorous experimenter. belling was born in the town of sounds fatal in northern germany he was a year old when and stein published his general theory of relativity. even as a boy billing was fascinated by einstein's ideas at school he was nicknamed meister because of his math skills he seems to have been born with

a talent for invention and innovation. the electronics acts but enthusiastically took on a proposal to repeat weber's experiment the chance of proving einstein's theory was incentive enough one of the people he recruited for his team was a young physicist from atlanta. just been let me over here faltered langley now in his seventy's learned about the planned experiment in an unusual way. this one in our news in that so there was an announcement in the newspaper i've already started a doctorate and alexander funk up like came home and my wife said look they're looking for someone to help measure gravitational waves i saw the article and

immediately i was electrified with her father a live. band and his doctoral thesis deciding instead to pioneer research into gravitational waves with hines filling. in the shadow the 2 scientists began to build their own resonance santana based on the web on design. but they were much much better than whether they were super technicians. and fact that's the key thing to the building group they were solid engineering physicists and they didn't cut corners they knew exactly what they were doing. we were really meticulous in carrying out the weber experiments we improve the amplifiers and other things and feeling over saw it all he was reliable everything

he did was done right that's how we went through with it it's whom. despite that different personality billing and web had a friendly relationship. the american physicist even willingly shared his research with the germans. was not the most thorough experiment he was a very imaginative man and certainly one of the people who originated the field and should get a lot of credit for that but as far as being a super. experimental scientist he was not as good as these people. together with an italian institute and building built to separate resonant santana's and improve the instruments as best they could then they began their measurements for 3 years they used the cylinders to listen to space they hoped to pick up the longed for gravitational waves and confirm the unbelievable but the

result was sobering. they saw nothing they could answer with absolute certainty that they saw nothing it wasn't ambiguous they said the chance of us seeing something or this thing being a gravitational wave is one in a 1000000000 we have on the we were the only ones in the world to do this sort of experiment with clearly better measurements than webber's and we found nothing we thank you for so we came up with the best proof that weber's process did not exist exist yet. joseph weber had been mistaken it was a realisation he was never able to cope with. the search for the arm known which had begun with such high hopes now appeared to have failed.

the purity of other theory titian's were satisfied their world view was safe and sound once again but it's a bit depressing for the experimenters when it's what you have built up something worked hard and probably for nothing on that boat off the director of the institute at the time said billing that the best job of not proving gravitational waves but the question was what to do next. what i didn't know in munich was that across the atlantic. a completely new idea was gaining momentum. cambridge massachusetts near boston is home to the elite massachusetts institute of technology mit. and here in the early 1970 s. a new hope was germinating in the field of gravitational wave research it was

thanks to the simple force experiments of a young professor named brain no weiss the students asked me about the weber experiments i didn't understand the weber experiments so i cooked up a technique where you could do the following to free floating masses in space what you do is you take a light start from one of these masses put a clock on this one and when it sends a light beam to this one you put a clock and stop the clock here then you send a like being back again and look at the clock over here and you look at the time it takes for the light to go from here to there and back again and you write it down and then a gravitation wave comes along and makes a slight difference in the length and you do the same experiment over and you'll find out it's a different time that was the invention of a detector ok big deal. captivated by the idea why stu sided to spend his summer doing the calculations to see if his

thought experiments could be turned into a real one. and to my amazement about time i got done. it looked to me like yeah if you made it big enough and you made it was 2 legs so you had one pair one pair of masses this way another pair of basses that way so i had an l. you could compare one where shrinking on the side expanding on that side you could compare the north south leg with the east west leg and you could actually do the experiment and you need only add one thing you needed you needed to make it long big. there was just one big problem weiss didn't have the money for sanction experiments at the time he was doing research for the american military but with the us finding the vietnam war i had no interest in an exotic search for

gravitational waves eventually he managed to submit his idea to a civil organization the national science foundation. he had no idea that the solution to his problem would come from a well known figure in munich. what happened was the people at the national science foundation sent my proposal to billing he saw it and it looked attractive to him he thought it was a good idea that tells me that you know he was thinking straight. and so he does what any real rational person would do it calls me up and he said that sounds like an interesting idea you're proposing would you mind if we worked on that i said no how could i mine as are scientific member of the max planck society spending was free to pursue whatever research he chose $975.00 together with valves having clothes and a handful of new colleagues he sent to work once again the team designed the 1st

laser interferometer the forerunner of the light go to texas and a cornerstone of modern gravitational wave research but at the time laser technology was still in its infancy in tiny aren't we had no idea about lasers it was all completely new territory to me when we started with a small interferometer with dimensions of around 10 centimeters that was the 1st interferometer we looked at what signals were there and then we made a 3 metre long while and then a 30 meter long one again in the federal meter on the leash we cut out all the problems that came along and. we figured out the things we had to watch for in order to measure it as sensitively as was theoretically possible from principally of nucleus. for years finkler and his colleagues tinkered with prototypes that were considerably more complex than webber's al-ameen him cylinder. they

made constant improvements to the laser vacuum and mirror system. bearings project grew and with it the hope that they might after all confirm einstein's hypothesis of the existence of gravitational waves. they discovered not only that the idea was good but also discovered a lot of things that i hadn't thought about and not thought of. problems that i had not thought of in my description of how this might work and they made significant. creative advances in the whole idea of doing this. the laser interferometer would be hines billings final research project he retired in 1982 at the age of 68 but he vowed he would live to see the discovery of gravitational waves.

his successor was constant dance man who already had plans not only to share the valuable research with his american colleagues but to build his own launch detector . but history had other plans. for the annoyance of the yacht in the early 1990 s. say our proposals were at about the same stage as the american like o. proposals for large interferometers for. but in the us it happened very quickly like i was approved as a line item in the congressional budget. in germany something happened that we all wanted to happen namely reunification but in the aftermath of reunification there was no money for a while but what money there was went to the east for us and it was. in the early 1990 s. 2 decades after the technology was invented the us began constructing 2 large

interferometers one was built here in 100 washington the other in far off louisiana line go technology to relies on at least 2 independent measuring stations it would take another 20 years to fine tune both detectors. in a sideman hall david chu major shows us how the advances made over 40 plus years of work finally came together to bring success. the basic idea as we said is that gravitational waves stretch and screen space and those 2 arms that we use to measure those lengths are down in this direction for kilometers and down in that direction for kilometers the 2 come together at what we call the vertex where the beam splitter is that splits that laser light into 2 equal passes

to go down the 24 kilometer long arms that laser is in a very very clean room it's then threaded into the vacuum system matched with mirrors that are this large into the beam size which is correct to then go down the 4 kilometer length not spreading any more than to about 10 centimeters in diameter that's the basic notion of the system everything that remains is a matter of keeping noise away. and so they will well prepared when on september the 14th 2015 a tiny signal reached after a long journey it was the echo of a cataclysmic cosmic event. good

timing could have been better of course because in the us most everyone was still in band. as well that's why it was around 2 am and 5 am in the us here it was just before noon so our people were all the way on one of the researchers marco drago was sitting at his computer and watching but. then it went be. the people. b. is an alert whenever the detector is recorded data several computer programs run alongside them if the same unusual thing happens and both detectors at the same time like within 10 milliseconds there is an alert. and suddenly there it was a clear signal drago couldn't make sense of it at 1st so he consulted a colleague together they puzzled over some sort of signal that had been picked up

in the us. the 1st everyone who saw it thought it was a test signal and that wouldn't have been unusual test signals are constantly fed into the data stream when the detectors are recording. but normally there'd be an entry in the database saying test signal. it was confusing it's easier for so finally they called the u.s. control room and asked to be it was a test signal and they said test everyone here is asleep. but not for much longer the excitement grew steadily at the line go control center the american soul so i began to wonder what the instruments had recorded normal activities were temporarily suspended i was in maine and i looked at the screen on the 14th of the book and i see

a very interesting thing it says at least it says fix that day has been cancelled we always fix things on tuesdays i see the same message at hanford fix a day has been cancelled why why has fixed that they've been cancelled all of a sudden there was a message from david shoemaker to me look on this planet secret location on the web and you'll see something and there was this way for. but it was still far too early to celebrate possible errors still had to be considered everything from simple noise to a hacking attack nothing was ruled out the search had gone on too long to risk it with a premise your announcement and we were very very scared of reproducing the weber deal. that was the thing of all of our minds that we could ruin the whole field by making a false claim and this is after having spent now close to $1000000000.00 for

a couple different faces to it right there is there is the intellectual acknowledgement that it must have been a real signal and then there's the change in world view from all of the decades that you spent trying to make an instrument that could possibly do something to the time after when that 1st signal was was observed so i think i was intellectually content that we'd actually detected something after a few weeks and it was months and months and months after that i would still wake up in the morning and ask myself if that really happened. then after 4 months and checking for signals. ladies and gentlemen. we have to check to gravitational waves we did it. only once there was no longer any doubt to the researches allow themselves a discrete sense of triumph.

puts in the foregoing you've been searching for something for dozens of years and then it suddenly there there's no moment when you shout eureka i've found it but there is an awareness that something very special has just happened. creeps up very slowly it takes weeks. in december 27th teen go project founders were awarded the greatest on a in science. first and foremost among them was professor rayner weiss after more than 40 years of research he received the nobel prize in physics. none of it would have been possible without. the work of the researchers in munich and heinz billing was able to keep his vow he was 102 when he heard the news the

gravitational waves had finally been detected. and closer for it said he is that was a great sense of achievement and all the work wasn't in vain $30000.00 a fortune for the few that actually led to research that's now expanding and growing through that and because it was a relief that all our work had a purpose after all and seen how the differences are. there are now 5 launch detectors around the world more than a 1000 scientists are cooperating every day recording more and more gravitational waves and that's just the beginning. of the latest project takes laser interferometers a step further out into space. look lanas to launch 3 satellites in

2034 inch equant with a laser. the arrow satellites will form a giant triangular consternation measuring 2 and a half 1000000 kilometers on each side. of. the triangle named lisa shortfall laser interferometer space antenna well all of it. thanks to its immense size it will be an even better detector of gravitational waves. but once we build laser interferometers in space we can use them to detect the most. as an aging objects in the universe namely the super massive black holes that are at the center of large

galaxies and if we can do that then we can eventually listen so far out that will reach the end of the universe and that is that will be the big bang or if we can listen far enough out that the signals have been travelling for 13800000000 years then we'll have detected the entire universe evictee it. only gravitational waves can tell us what the big bang was really like they can bring us closer than ever before to answering one of humanity's greatest mysteries. it will take time before we will really solve it but already the 1st detected gravitational waves have directly proven the existence of black holes for the 1st time and told us about colliding neutron star and on a cosmic event. that's not a bad stock for such a young field. and

when we 1st started looking at the sky is human beings we saw it galaxies and everything looked pretty stationary but when you start looking at an x. rays or you start looking at it and radio waves you find out there's a madhouse out there collisions going on things are sex floating this plasma flying all over the place things are radiating and oscillating and it would be absolutely a miracle. if when we open up now this gravitational wave way of looking at the universe there are things we have never even thought about. and i'm only 63 and with the best of health i might live to 120 years that's another 57 years i'm only halfway there and everything that's happened in the last 63 years is incredible as the go it will go online. this year so i'll get to hear the big bang. somewhere out there that signal is already on its

way the only question is when it will reach us. miss fines against illegal gold diggers. in her room is jungles this takes heavy weapons the price of gold skyrocketed during the pandemic and the number of forbidding mines is exploding with company a special unit in their dangerous work against reckless environmental destruction. global 3030 minutes on d w. life on earth one of

a kind and. budget i get a coincidence. were comparable happened. on a bit like winning the lottery. push for unique starts february 11th on t.w. . frank food to help watch international gateway to the best connections off air road and rail. located in the heart of europe you are connected to the whole world. experience outstanding shopping and dining offers and try our services. be our guest at frankfurt airport city managed.

this is t w news coming to you live from more than a 1000 people are arrested in russia after the jailing of kremlin critic alexei navalny bribed police turned out in force in moscow to prevent people from demonstrating against the court ruling activists say they're targeting peaceful protesters upon the accuses president vladimir putin of trying to intimidate his critics also coming up the fight against the pandemic gets a boost after advanced trials show russia's. vaccine is more than 90 percent the fact.