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Thread: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

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    Default Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Science confirms that gravitational waves exist
    At last, scientists have validated a key part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. The National Science Foundation, Caltech and MIT have confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime. Their two LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) detectors measured atomic-scale differences on September 14th, 2015 that point to the collision of black holes (also a new discovery) 1.3 billion years ago, triggering gravity ripples that only just reached Earth. There have long been hints of these waves, but hard evidence has proven elusive until now.

    Besides proving that Einstein had a solid idea, the findings promise to change how we study the universe. To date, researchers have had to observe the cosmos through light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation, which can only tell you so much about what's going on. Gravitational waves can reveal a lot about cataclysmic events in the universe, such as collisions between black holes, neutron stars being torn apart, supernovae and even traces of early expansion following the Big Bang. Effectively, scientists are removing a blindfold -- they could soon have a much more complete picture of space that answers some longstanding questions.
    This is us getting an entirely new way of getting information from the universe. So far, we could only observe different forms of radiations. This is a major development. It will likely open an entire new study field.
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Also. Predicted by Einstein. Yo. Dude was awesome.
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    Vanoi's Avatar Dux Limitis
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Could this theoretically mean time travel is possible?
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Vanoi View Post
    Could this theoretically mean time travel is possible?
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Vanoi View Post
    Could this theoretically mean time travel is possible?
    I think it would merely create a wave of time dilation which doesn't really explain how you'd go forward or back in time. Time is likely an oscillation between two set points anyway...
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    Gallus's Avatar Protector Domesticus
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Setekh View Post
    Science confirms that gravitational waves exist


    This is us getting an entirely new way of getting information from the universe. So far, we could only observe different forms of radiations. This is a major development. It will likely open an entire new study field.
    Gravitational waves are an important discovery, but I don't think that using them to observe the universe is very realistic, unless they set up a detector in space. Their effect is simply too small.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vanoi View Post
    Could this theoretically mean time travel is possible?
    No.

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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallus View Post
    Gravitational waves are an important discovery, but I don't think that using them to observe the universe is very realistic, unless they set up a detector in space. Their effect is simply too small.
    If that ever stopped people from trying we wouldn't have a lot of scientific discoveries. We certainly wouldn't have this discovery. They seem to have devised a quite simplistic and effective way of measuring gravitational waves at a certain point in space anyway. You don't need to do it in space.
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    You do if you want to eliminate the noise. The fact is that ground is constantly shaking, and to find gravitational waves you really need to minimize that or you won't notice them. And the simplest way to eliminate ground shaking is going into space. The wave they noticed was supposedly from a collision of two black holes. That's nice, but collision of two black holes is basically the greatest possible disturbance in spacetime you can imagine. If you want to make gravitational waves useful you need to be able to detect much smaller disturbances.

    But like you said, you have to start somewhere and this definitely a good start.

  9. #9

    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallus View Post
    You do if you want to eliminate the noise. The fact is that ground is constantly shaking, and to find gravitational waves you really need to minimize that or you won't notice them. And the simplest way to eliminate ground shaking is going into space. The wave they noticed was supposedly from a collision of two black holes. That's nice, but collision of two black holes is basically the greatest possible disturbance in spacetime you can imagine. If you want to make gravitational waves useful you need to be able to detect much smaller disturbances.

    But like you said, you have to start somewhere and this definitely a good start.
    That noise you speak of is quite negligible for this kind of data collection.
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallus View Post
    Gravitational waves are an important discovery, but I don't think that using them to observe the universe is very realistic, unless they set up a detector in space. Their effect is simply too small.



    We would have had a space based GW dectector by now, but in their infinite wisdom the US Congress cut the funding. With this land based discovery Nasa will likely get the funds reinstated. But I think it was an international program that shifted to Europe when Nasa had to pull out, so I don't know if they re-merge the program or if Nasa will do something separate.

    But chicks dig Mars. So let's keep building those rockets.

    Last edited by Sphere; February 12, 2016 at 12:52 PM.

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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallus View Post
    You do if you want to eliminate the noise. The fact is that ground is constantly shaking, and to find gravitational waves you really need to minimize that or you won't notice them. And the simplest way to eliminate ground shaking is going into space. The wave they noticed was supposedly from a collision of two black holes. That's nice, but collision of two black holes is basically the greatest possible disturbance in spacetime you can imagine. If you want to make gravitational waves useful you need to be able to detect much smaller disturbances.

    But like you said, you have to start somewhere and this definitely a good start.
    Ground shaking != gravitational waves.

    The way the detectors work is sending laser beams through vacuum tubes and measuring an interference pattern when they merge indicating changes in actual distance. There can be as much noise around as it wants (within reason), it doesn't really bother light in a vacuum tube aka the setup has to be build to not be affected by it in the first place. I think the main advantage of the interference pattern is that you can better identify the noise vs. a real shift by gravitational waves.

    That said space would be a better place to do the measuring, mainly because you can set up really big detector systems of several satellites doing the same assuming you can assure a very precise joined orbit of them. The main thing is you need to be certain of the distances so you can measure the changes in distance based on those waves instead of any other gravitational effect.
    Last edited by Mangalore; February 15, 2016 at 04:26 PM.
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Mangalore View Post
    Ground shaking != gravitational waves.
    Come on Dude. The equivalence principle. Any acceleration will disturb the laser.

    You can read here all the things the LIGO experiment did to measure these other sources and thus be able to subtract them out. Hell, they had microphones to measure the sound-waves in the room.

    https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LA/page/faq

  13. #13

    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Sphere View Post
    Come on Dude. The equivalence principle. Any acceleration will disturb the laser.

    You can read here all the things the LIGO experiment did to measure these other sources and thus be able to subtract them out. Hell, they had microphones to measure the sound-waves in the room.

    https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LA/page/faq
    While I would retract part of my brash statement the LIGO experiment measures a difference in spacetime not in mass (obviously indirectly they did that as well but the target was that distance within spacetime changed). The issue would be with the fixed machines of the experiment getting moved, not the laser beams in a vacuum getting affected by something. The later would be unaffected by noise whether they are in vacuum tubes or in vacuum of space. Ground shaking is atoms bashing into each other. The laser beams suspended inside a vaccuum tube don't have that problem.

    The entire setup is to be less affected by vibration. As for changes in distance what this vibration could still cause in all the machinery attached to anything I'm not sure how stable we can get a set of satellites into a relative position when it is about nanometers. Compared to that an Earth bound experiment is probably far easier to control and weed out side effects which is obviously still very tricky. The base setup of the experiment simply isn't affected by ground shaking. It's the circumstances that are problematic and there a space bound system would simply have other problems like less access to finetune and control the setup once it's up there.

    Though the next step would be a detector longer than 4 km and if anything there is lots of space in space though I would guess a bigger detector on Earth is not a problem, yet.
    "Sebaceans once had a god called Djancaz-Bru. Six worlds prayed to her. They built her temples, conquered planets. And yet one day she rose up and destroyed all six worlds. And when the last warrior was dying, he said, 'We gave you everything, why did you destroy us?' And she looked down upon him and she whispered, 'Because I can.' "
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    So the sensed a disturbance in the force of gravity? Did they find our lack of faith disturbing too?
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    It's as if millions of creationists cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...

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    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    No idea what this has to do with creationism.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vanoi View Post
    Could this theoretically mean time travel is possible?
    Nope. Time, like gravity, is the residual result of your own existence but unlike gravity it is a dimension all of its own. You need waaaaay more than gravitational waves to bend the laws of physics to such a degree so that you might be able to move through a 4 dimensional space. Basically time travel is like a drawing coming off the paper into your 3 dimensional world.
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Magister Militum Flavius Aetius View Post
    It's as if millions of creationists cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...
    The heck?
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    So the sensed a disturbance in the force of gravity? Did they find our lack of faith disturbing too?
    Quote Originally Posted by Magister Militum Flavius Aetius View Post
    It's as if millions of creationists cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...
    This just earned you two the "Witty Episode IV Remark Award", substantiated in +1 rep.

    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Shuu View Post
    Nope. Time, like gravity, is the residual result of your own existence but unlike gravity it is a dimension all of its own. You need waaaaay more than gravitational waves to bend the laws of physics to such a degree so that you might be able to move through a 4 dimensional space. Basically time travel is like a drawing coming off the paper into your 3 dimensional world.
    Within the confines of General Relativity time is not an independent dimension, but tied to the three spatial dimensions via the metric tensor of the universe. The paper from the other thread shows that using gravitational waves light-like geodesics may be accelerated beyond the speed of light from the point of view of a distant observer, simply by the compression of the spacetime they have to transverse. However, their eigen-time remains unaffected, so they cannot become locally closed (a closed, loop shaped worldline/geodesic is the geometric way of expressing timetravel). The only possible way for time travel we can currently think of would be globally closed worldlines, i.e. those that close due to the global geometry of the universe. However, of the latter we know very little and if the measurements regarding the expansion are correct, then it is likely that the universe cannot contain any such globally closed curves.

    In short, sorry, no time travel today. (Correct me if you travelled to today from the future.)
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    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    I'm a physics noob so this may sound stupid: This thought just occurred to me: If gravity propagates via waves (not sure if propagates is the correct term but i don't have a better one) and all waves have a speed does it mean there is a speed of gravity? And if not why not?
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    Default Re: Science Confirms That Gravitational Waves Exist

    Gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light. However, one needs to distinguish between gravitational waves, which are a disturbance of the geometry of spacetime caused by significant changes in the mass/energy distribution at some point in the universe, and the propagation of gravity itself as a force (analogue to photons transmitting the electromagnetic force). The hypothetical particle/wavelet-thingy for gravity, analogue to the photon, is the graviton, but as far as I know it has not been detected yet. It's detection would be a major step in understanding quantumgravity, i.e. how the usually large-scale theory of relativity works in the completely different setting of particle physics. One would expect the graviton to move at the speed of light, too, though.
    "Non i titoli illustrano gli uomini, ma gli uomini i titoli." - Niccolo Machiavelli, Discorsi
    "Du musst die Sterne und den Mond enthaupten, und am besten auch den Zar. Die Gestirne werden sich behaupten, aber wahrscheinlich nicht der Zar." - Einstürzende Neubauten, Weil, Weil, Weil

    On an eternal crusade for reason, logics, catholicism and chocolate. Mostly chocolate, though.

    I can heartily recommend the Italian Wars mod by Aneirin.
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