The lack of posts was because I’ve been in Australia for roughly a month. Of course, it’s been two months since the last post; all I can say is that preparation and settling back in takes a little while.
Pretty much the only thing I missed while away was the detection of gravitational waves by LIGO. No doubt this is Nobel Prize material, although the importance of LIGO and the NSF is far greater than just gravitational waves. Thousands of people have been involved with LIGO - including me, through a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at Caltech in 2012. I know the effort was huge, and doing science right isn’t easy. I remember hearing about a fake gravitational wave data being injected without telling anybody - to test the analysis in case of a real event. Clearly, it paid off. And I know I learned a lot during that summer, not just about science. So this is a good time to again thank LIGO, Caltech, and the NSF for the opportunity, and congratulations!