A research paper, which includes as co-authors Southampton mathematician Dr Ian Jones and PhD student Greg Ashton, has become the third most discussed journal article of 2016 according to the annual Altmetric Top 100.
The paper Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger was published in February in the journal Physical Review Letters and revealed for the first time how scientists observed ripples in the fabric of space-time called gravitational waves. The discovery confirmed the major outstanding prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opened an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.
The discovery was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors. Dr Jones has spent 13 years working on the international gravitational wave detection project, providing colleagues with models for what the gravitational wave signals from small dense stars, known as neutron stars, might look like, and advising how best to search for these signals amongst other ‘noisy’ data.
The annual Altmetric Top 100 highlights published research papers that have generated significant international online attention and discussion – from mainstream news media, blogs, Wikipedia, social media platforms (including Twitter, Reddit and Facebook) and in scholarly spaces such as post-publication peer-review forums and patient advocacy groups. In the past year, Altmetric has tracked over 17 million mentions of 2.7 million different research outputs to produce their Top 100.
The number one paper in the Altmetric Top 100 was written by US President Barack Obama and published in the medical journal JAMA. The paper discussed the progress of the Affordable Healthcare Act and recommendations for future governments. The paper was the first published by a sitting president.
