The Ripple in Space That No One Believed

At 5:51 a.m. on September 14, 2015, a faint chirp appeared on the detectors at LIGO — the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory — in Livingston, Louisiana. It lasted a fraction of a second: two black holes spiraling into each other 1.3 billion light-years away, sending a ripple through the fabric of space-time.

Postdoctoral researcher Marco Drago, monitoring data from his office in Hannover, Germany, was among the first to see it. But he hesitated. The waveform looked too clean, too perfect. The LIGO team routinely planted fake signals — "blind injections" — to test whether researchers could spot them. Drago and his colleagues spent weeks questioning what they had heard. Was it real, or just another drill? It took the senior leadership to finally confirm: no injection had been planted. The signal was authentic. They had heard the universe speak.

Young Samuel heard a voice three times in the darkness and ran to old Eli each time, certain the priest had called him. Samuel was not hard of hearing — he simply did not yet recognize the voice of the Almighty. It took Eli, weary as he was, to identify what was happening: "Go lie down, and if He calls you, say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"

Sometimes God's call sounds too clear to be real. We need a seasoned guide beside us to say, "That's Him. Answer."