Seeing Gravity

EVERYBODY LOVES THE SMITHSONIAN, because it is a great monument to human achievement, a lot of fun, and highly educational to boot. Everybody has a favorite building, a favorite memory, and a favorite display. thirty five years ago my favorite thing was a gravity wave detector, which consisted of a beautiful shiny, solid silver colored metal cylinder, about a foot in diameter and a foot or so long, with a small hole through its exact center, through which was threaded a thin wire, with a support beam at both ends. Sumbitch musta weighed a tone. I have no idea how it was supposed to work, maybe because it didn't work. it might be that gravity waves were supposed to gently, slightly move the cylinder, and that the movement would be detected by the way in which it changed its position upon the wire. Something like that. it was an early, primitive attempt at scientific instrumentation. Einstein, who predicted the existence of gravity waves but also predicted that they would never be detected, might have found the whole affair quaint, if a bit silly. I remember how I kept going back to the object, over and over again, despite th abundant and generally more interesting displays throughout the building. My parents thought I was a bit off, as usual. I was attracted to its sleek, shiny, simple symmetry, and maybe to the nobility, and futility, of its purpose. Too bad it didn't work. the good news is that there is evidently one that does work, for verily, just in the past couple of weeks gravity waves have been detected, proving that, once again, Einstein was right all along about the existence of gravity waves, although he was wrong in his assumption that gravity waves would never be detected. If Einstein could be wrong, anybody can be wrong, eh? Einstein was never afraid to be wrong, unlike the rest of us. Most, nearly all of the time, he was right. He's remindful of Peter Rose, who had more hits than anyone in baseball history, and made more outs than anyone in baseball history. You gotta swing the bat. Einstein always said he liked to tackle to tough problems, and that he had no patience with scientists who drilled a great many hole sin a piece of wood where the wood was thinnest and the drilling easiest. he also said: 'I veel a little tink."