TITLE: Recent observation of gravitational waves
QUESTION [54 upvotes]: It was exciting to hear that LIGO detected the merging of two black
holes one billion light-years away. One of the black holes had 36
times the mass of the sun, and the other 29. After the merging the
mass was that of 62 suns, with the rest converted to gravitational
radiation. Could someone explain, without assuming a deep knowledge of
general relativity, how these conclusions were reached?

REPLY [23 votes]: The numbers 36,29,62 were obtained as the best match between the received signals and the output of computer simulations. The 90% confidence intervals on these numbers are about $\pm 4$.  The details (largely beyond my understanding) are in the technical paper here.