This is a huge day for Kip Thorne (and others). Nadia Drake has a comprehensive story up already.
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Here’s another write up by Matthew Francis at The Atlantic.
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Here‘s the paper itself.
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And one from Miri Kramer.
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And from Loren Grush.
But was Kip wearing a sexist SF-bimbo shirt?
That should be the focus of this event. Perhaps Mao suits are appropriate to avoid any bimbo eruptions/trigger events.
I remember him walking around Caltech with a t-shirt that had the Wilhelm Killing vector formula on the front
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_vector_field
On the back the t-shirt said, “Killing is Wrong”.
He _almost_ flunked me in his class. I dropped it instead, with his gracious and enthusiastic permission.
I’m amused to note that Catherine Asaro also has an interview up with one of the principal investigators, NASA’s John Cannizzo. You can see it here. She has taken advantage of a shortcut, though – Asaro and Cannizzo are married.
Did it cause any global warming?
Lowly chem plant engineer here, so use small words.
Now that we’re able to detect gravity waves, what are the implications for generating them? In short, where’s my anti-gravity drive?
And how about riding them or using them for orbital maneuvers?
One comment I read described the big black home merger observed as releasing the energy equivalent of 3 solar masses as gravity waves, a couple billion light years away. So nothing we’re going to duplicate locally any time soon.
First: Make a black hole.
Dunno no anti gravity drive, for you unless you can supply nearly the mass of the universe at a few different point to maybe beam form, or do a standing wave. But the amount of mass/energy have access/control over for it to be anything useful the gravity wave effect is a mere parlor trick.
Now improvements to detection may allow for none traditional Line of sight communications. But assume for most part any man made gravity wave, would be well into the noise and nearly impossible to detect, and require computation intense filtering to be useful.
Right now Gravity wave, is another quirk of the universe that man won’t have practical use for at least the near future. Like space and time dilation. Outside of possibly increase precision, and compensation for something else.
At some point people have to accept that many science fiction tropes, like antigravity or FTL travel, are about as realistic as magic spells. There was no reason the universe had to be arranged to make cool SF technology possible.
Does this “roiling mess of curved space” make me look fat?
Even more fascinating is the design of the advanced LIGO. Just imagine putting something 1,000 times bigger into space.
We’re gonna need a bigger SLS.
Here is what the representative from Utah had to say about NASA’s newly redesigned SDHHHHLV ( pronounced essdeehahahahaelvee ) :
If you going too slow i feel bad for you son, i got 99 boosters all on stage one.
Interesting that the LIGO interferometers are fairly direct descendants of the device used in the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 that partially motivated Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Which in turn preceded his theory of general relativity that predicted gravitational waves.
Nomenclature nit: “gravity waves” are gravity-driven vertical oscillations in the atmosphere such as mountain waves, which form downwind of a mountain range. The mountains push up the horizontally moving atmosphere, which then oscillates up and down in characteristic fashion, driven by gravity. Lots of clear air turbulence (as well as spectacular lenticular clouds) are caused by the breakdown of gravity waves and/or their interactions with the atmosphere. The Sierra Nevadas west of Edwards and China Lake are great gravity wave generators, especially in the winter; the waves can persist noticeably to above 70,000 ft.
Gravitational waves are what were detected by Advanced LIGO.
> Nomenclature nit: “gravity waves” are gravity-driven vertical oscillations in the atmosphere such as mountain waves, which form downwind of a mountain range.
Even more nitty, so are water waves, both surface and internal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave
I agree that the nomenclature distinction is useful, as fluid dynamic gravity waves are not at all the same thing as general relativistic gravitational waves.
Re “generating” gravity. According to the law of gravity — Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which is on exhibit in the extraordinary results proffered here — the feeling of acceleration as one is pushed back in one’s seat as your rocket, jet plane, or car accelerates, IS gravity. Ditto for the feeling of weight within a centrifuge, or away from the axis on a rotating space station.
Yeah, this has practical uses only for astronomers at the moment. Be a bit of a disappointment if they don’t find anything peculiar with it.
It’s kind of annoying, really, The NYTimes proclaimed “Physicists Detect Gravitational Waves, Proving Einstein Right”. Well, yes and no. Assuming it holds up, it proves gravitational waves exist. But, gravitational waves are predicted by other theories of gravity and, in particular, the formulas are derived from the linearized equations of GR – the effect is so small that first order terms are all that is remotely observable, even with LIGO.
Einstein was a sharp fellow, nobody can dispute that. But, he wasn’t supernaturally smart, or all that far ahead of his peers, if he could even be said to be ahead of other 20th century giants like Niels Bohr. The deification of Einstein is part and parcel of the elevation of science to religion on the part of those who do not understand it very well, or at all, but want to use it to impose their dogma on everyone else.
So I guess Newton wasn’t all that, either? Photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, general relativity, mass equivalence, and he wasn’t “supernaturally smart?!” Oh, please.
Mass-energy equivalence, I meant.