"Sufficiently Advanced Technology" for Gravitational Wave Detection

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of gravitational wave detection technology over six decades, highlighting the advancements that made such detection possible and the learning process involved.

Contribution

It provides an idiosyncratic historical account emphasizing how technological progress reached the level needed for gravitational wave detection.

Findings

Decades of technological development led to successful detection.

Learning processes were crucial in advancing measurement capabilities.

Thousand of scientists contributed to the progress.

Abstract

The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." While not magical by any means, the technology used to detect gravitational waves starting in 2015 is surely sufficiently advanced to be remarkable by any ordinary standard. That technology was developed over a period of almost six decades; the people who were directly involved numbered in the thousands. In this article, I give an idiosyncratic account of the history, with a focus on the question of how people learned what measurement technology would be "sufficiently advanced" to succeed in detecting gravitational waves.