Not only Astronomy Picture of the Day and the Daily Galaxy but also the BBC News majored today on the first detection of gravitational waves.

I first heard of such waves while I was still at University back in the long ago when a Physics Prof at Glasgow University came along to the Alchemists’ Club (as the post-grad Chemists association was called) to tell us all about his research, so it’s been a long time coming.

The discovery is a major confirmation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity certainly but can it really be the opening of a new window onto the universe akin to Galileo’s pointing of a telescope at Jupiter as the TV news had it? Given that the signals are so hard to detect as a result of the disturbances to matter being so small surely the technique cannot become as routine as results from electromagnetic instruments are?