We’re guessing that once again, the official response will be that they’re currently analyzing the data and everyone should just be patient, because you can’t rush this kind of tricky analysis. TL;DR: They will neither confirm nor deny the rumor.

UPDATE 3:18 PM: Alan Weinstein, who heads the LIGO group at Caltech, had this to say via email: “My response to you is no more or less than the official one, which is the truth: ‘We are analyzing 01 data and will share news when ready.’ I’d say that it is wisest to just be patient.”

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That’s good advice in general when rumors of exciting breakthroughs begin circulating. But in this case, it’s quite possible that they are true. Loyola University physicist Robert McNees pointed out on Twitter that he’d only made one prediction for physics breakthroughs in 2016: that Advanced LIGO would directly detect gravitational waves. And he certainly wasn’t the only one to do so. He also had a few things to say about this brave new world we live in, where big physics news inevitably leaks out onto social media:

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“I guess I’d say that rumors just reflect how excited we all get about the prospect of new discoveries. It’s natural to feel that way! But the last thing we want to do is jump the gun,” McNees told Gizmodo via Twitter DM. “The best way to support these scientists is to let them carry out their experiments and analysis the way they were meant to be done. Let them take the time to do things the right way! And as physicists, I think we need to greet the inevitable rumors with explanations of how science works and why it’s so important to be careful. Even if that means having to wait for exciting news.”

Sigh. Fine. We’ll be hanging onto the edge of our seats waiting for official confirmation one way or the other. If true—well, it’s a hell of a way to kick off 2016. And it would probably be a shoo-in for this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.

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Image: Visualization of gravity waves. Image Credit: Werner Benger / Wikimedia.