I guess you could count one looong wave as a series of one-time events/measurements, but it could as well be a loooong interference.

In case you'd like to dig deeper, the 85 and 86 mentioned are:

[85] K. Cannon et al., Astrophys. J. 748, 136 (2012).

[86] S. Privitera, S. R. P. Mohapatra, P. Ajith, K. Cannon, N. Fotopoulos, M. A. Frei, C. Hanna, A. J. Weinstein, and J. T. Whelan, Phys. Rev. D 89, 024003 (2014),

To put it another way, you need a single black swan to prove that black swans exists (to whatever sigma).

I may have pushed the analogy too far!

Also, I cannot edit nor delete it now, so tough luck!

        " "    SPACE	                        Basic Latin
               0x0020
        "̶"     COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY	Combining Diacritical Marks
               0x0336

Also, have read today that this discovery backs inflationary theory, how so?

It seems highly unlikely that they could say a specific bh-bh merger was the cause. It seems implied they are triangulating the source, with two detectors?

Just to be clear here; that's because there is no theory for a multiverse. Not yet, anyways. Nobody has put one forth yet. When you hear "multiverse" come out of physicist's mouth, it's because it's a concept indirectly related to other theories. The current popular theory which involves a multiverse is string theory. When string theorists do the math, there is some evidence that a multiverse is possible.

However, that doesn't mean much. Even if string theory was correct and little strings are really the fundamental component of everything in the universe, the multiverse part of string theory could still be wrong. The theory isn't reliant on it, it just doesn't forbid it.

I also wouldn't say that it's entirely untestable. There are a couple things that could be indicative of a multiverse that some physicists have looked for: http://phys.org/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.h...

The source isn't the greatest, but it shows that we can look at the CMB for indirect evidence. With higher resolution scanning years in the future, such a theory may be testable. I only mention this because the way your comment reads, it sounds like you're saying a multiverse would be inherently untestable.

Or if spacetime folds back onto itself?

Analogy: it could happen that tomorrow Jesus Christ descends from the heavens and brings the day of reckoning. That would prove Christianity to be true, but the fact that this could happen does not make Christianity a falsifiable theory.

A falsifiable theory is a theory that predicts something that we can (in theory) measure today (possibly requiring infinite resources etc).

Your second example (which is not a multiverse theory at all) is actually a good example of a falsifiable theory. People have calculated [1] that if spacetime was folded back onto itself at even just a single point, it would leave a distinct signature in the cosmic microwave background. We do not observe this signature, so we are pretty sure spacetime does not fold back onto itself.

[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.2842

And from the paper: "The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410+160-180 Mpcc corresponding to a redshift z=0.09+0.03-0.04.". (https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P150914/public) Which corresponds to 1.337+0.522-0.587 billion ly (or between 750.2 million and 1.859 billion ly).

Looks like there are roughly three million galaxies within a billion light years. Seems like lots of space for black hole pairs to live in. I suppose over the coming years, these gravity wave observatories will nail down just how common they are.

That's some serious range!

For example, the edge of the observable universe is about 46.5 lightyears away, while the universe is thought to be 13.8 billion years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Misconcept...

I assume you mean 46.5 billion?

Interested to know what they were shooting for when they spun this experiment up.