1.3 billion years ago, in a distant, distant galaxy, two black holes locked into a spiral, falling inexorably towards each other and collided, converting three suns’ worth of stuff into pure energy in a tenth of a second. For that brief moment in time, the glow was brighter than all the stars in all the galaxies in all of the known Universe.
It was a very big bang.
1.3 billion years ago, Earth had just managed to evolve multicellular life. Since then, Earth has made and evolved corals, fish, plants, dinosaurs, people and even — God save us — the Internet. And about 25 years ago, a particularly audacious set of people — Rai Weiss at MIT…
