2016's best bits: breakthroughs in science

It came from beyond the Large Magellanic Cloud. The signal, a mere 20 milliseconds long, captured the moment when two black holes slammed together – a cataclysm that sent ripples through spacetime and onwards to Earth, where they made instruments chirp and scientists cheer. "We have detected gravitational waves," said David Reitze of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo). The announcement ranked as the physics discovery of the year, confirming Einstein's century-old theory of gravity and putting the Ligo team on course for a Nobel. But the real excitement is yet to come.