Moments ago, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced that they made a revolutionary discovery, one that they will be unveiling to the world on Monday (October 16th). According to the media advisory released today by the ESO, scientists have observed an astronomical phenomenon that has never been witnessed before.

Beyond that, no information is available regarding this most recent announcement.

The last time that astronomers unveiled a groundbreaking discovery of this nature was when scientists working at LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detected gravitational waves. Ultimately, the find ushered us into a new era in astronomy, allowing us to see the universe as never before.

To clarify, before this detection, we were only able to perceive the cosmos through observations of electromagnetic radiation—through gamma rays, x-rays, visible light, and so on. Thanks to the LIGO discovery, we can now observe the very ripples of spacetime itself.

Remarkably, the waves were even powerful enough to break the Internet, bringing down both the LIGO and American Physical Society websites.

Of course, there are a number of mysteries that scientists have yet to explain in relation the origins and evolution of the cosmos. As such, it is difficult to pin down the specific nature of this observation—perhaps scientists finally observed dark energy, the mysterious force that is thought to make up approximately 73 percent of the universe, or perhaps it is a discovery that scientists never before fathomed. Stay tuned.