Gravitational waves detected 100 years after Einstein’s prediction – video folows
American University contributes to noise-reduction technology in LIGO detectors
For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.
Gravitational waves carry information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained. Physicists have concluded that the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed.
The gravitational waves were detected on Sept. 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (9:51 UTC) by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, USA. The LIGO Observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and were conceived, built, and are operated by Caltech and MIT. The discovery, accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO600 Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors.
American University and partners fine-tune optics
American University is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. AU currently is the sole university in Washington, D.C. to participate in LIGO and is led by Gregory Harry, assistant professor of physics.
“The detection of gravitational waves marks the beginning of a new way of observing the universe,” said Harry, one of the authors of the detection paper published in Physical Review Letters. “Now that physicists have evidence that LIGO detectors can detect gravitational waves, it is exciting to think about how much we will likely learn about the nature of gravity.”
At AU, researchers work to fine-tune the optical materials used in the LIGO detectors. Mirrors used in the detectors have reflective coatings. Over time, researchers realized the coatings limited the detectors’ sensitivity because of thermal vibrations. Harry’s team helped to develop improved coatings that allowed for greater sensitivity. Experimental research by Harry’s team will continue to focus on new and improved ways to further reduce noise.
Since 2011, more than 10 AU undergraduate students have participated in LIGO research at AU, including two who contributed research to the gravitational waves discovery and are now physics Ph.D. candidates working on LIGO at universities in Scotland and New York. The AU LIGO group is also involved in public outreach and is developing an “Optics Olympiad,” which will bring D.C. public schools students to campus to share in the excitement of LIGO research.
American University is proud to have worked with many outstanding scientists at other universities to have brought LIGO to the sensitivity to make this detection. The list includes Georgia Tech, California State University-Fullerton, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of Oregon, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, Carleton College, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Penn State University, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Trinity University, and Whitman College.
Teamwork leads to discovery
The discovery of gravitational waves was made possible by the enhanced capabilities of Advanced LIGO, a major upgrade that increases the sensitivity of the instruments compared to the first-generation LIGO detectors, enabling a large increase in the volume of the universe probed–and the discovery of gravitational waves during its first observation run. The U.S. National Science Foundation leads in financial support for Advanced LIGO. Funding organizations in Germany (Max Planck Society), the U.K. (Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC) and Australia (Australian Research Council) also have made significant commitments to the project. Several of the key technologies that made Advanced LIGO so much more sensitive have been developed and tested by the German UK GEO collaboration. Several universities designed, built, and tested key components for Advanced LIGO: The Australian National University, the University of Florida, Stanford University, Columbia University of New York, and Louisiana State University.
LIGO research is carried out by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), a group of more than 1,000 scientists from universities around the United States and in 14 other countries. More than 90 universities and research institutes in the LSC develop detector technology and analyze data; approximately 250 students are strong contributing members of the collaboration. The LSC detector network includes the LIGO interferometers and the GEO600 detector. The GEO team includes scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI), Leibniz Universität Hannover, along with partners at the University of Glasgow, Cardiff University, the University of Birmingham, other universities in the United Kingdom, and the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain. Significant computer resources have been contributed by the AEI Atlas cluster, the LIGO Laboratory, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
LIGO was originally proposed as a means of detecting these gravitational waves in the 1980s by Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus, from MIT; Kip Thorne, Caltech’s Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, emeritus; and Ronald Drever, professor of physics, emeritus, also from Caltech. Virgo research is carried out by the Virgo Collaboration, consisting of more than 250 physicists and engineers belonging to 19 different European research groups: 6 from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France; 8 from the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy; 2 in the Netherlands with Nikhef; the WignervRCP in Hungary; the POLGRAW group in Poland and the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), the laboratory hosting the Virgo detector near Pisa in Italy.
###
To learn more about the discovery, visit the official LIGO Scientific Collaboration website at http://www.ligo.org
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is what science is supposed to be about. This is not climate science, this is real ground-breaking science.
The signal discovered can only be caused by two black holes merging over about 0.2 seconds. The gravitational waves generated, put out 50 times more energy in that time than all the stars in the entire universe during that time.
The detector in Louisiana picked up the signal 7 milliseconds before the detector in Washington State did which means the waves travel at the speed of light and were not caused by local ground movement.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity is proven again.
There really are black holes in space. The only objects which could have generated this type of signal is two stellar black holes merging. Which also means that really are black holes in space and there are stellar black holes
These black holes are smaller as opposed to supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies which can be 100 million solar masses. These were stellar black holes with 36 solar masses and 29 solar masses respectively. They formed from large supernova events and then absorbed another 100% of mass from other stars and gas over billions of years.
The gravitational waves produced were exactly identical to that predicted in theory and the calculations derived from Einstein’s equation. Scientists first started calculating what gravitational waves would do in the 1960s and made further more detailed calculations over time and especially in the last decade. They matched the signal almost exactly perfectly.
The black holes were 1.3 billion light years away when they merged, somewhere behind the Large Magellanic Cloud companion galaxy in the southern hemisphere.
When they merged, energy was converted to gravitational waves and it took 1.3 billion years to get here.
When they merged, the energy given up was 3 solar masses in total. The black holes had 65 solar masses in mass when they started to merge and only 62 solar masses after the merger was completed. Our Sun will last for 10 billion years and will only convert about 1% of its mass into energy in that time. In 0.2 seconds, this black hole merger extracted 300% of the Sun’s mass in the form of gravitational energy.
Mass can therefore also escape from a black hole in the form of gravitational energy. THIS is the most exciting thing about the discovery. MASSIVE energy can be extracted from mass and the universe through gravity and something might have moved faster than the speed of light to escape from the black holes (negative space-time even for a brief instant).
They will now be able to observe many other events with the new upgrades in LIGO. Neutron stars, other black holes, supernovas.
Gravity will be controlled some day (my thought). That means, space travel, manipulating space-time, unlimited energy.
“The signal discovered can only be caused by two black holes merging over about 0.2 seconds.”
Only? Please excuse my ignorance, but how could we know the masses of these objects?
The size of their orbits depends on their masses, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit
And how do we know the size of their orbits? We invent them!
No, we measure them from the frequency [and its change over time] of the observed waves.
Bill, thank you for an excellent comment to a layman; putting things in a context that is at least understandable.
Does anyone know how often we will find such .2 second bursts from light years away to repeat and confirm such experiments?
Many gravity waves will now be detected, some presumably of longer duration and greater power, some less.
Bill Illis
+ 1.3 billion!
Thank you! All one needs to do is visit the LIGO site and spend some time learning the science behind this discovery. Watch the video of the announcement. The waves were detected back in September, so they took quite a bit of time to confirm the results before announcing.
The engineering involved in this project is truly astounding…and I agree with Leif that this is one of those moments that truly inspire.
From https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_gravitational_waves_ripples_in_the_curvature_of_spacetime_or_are_it_fluctuations_of_the_gravitational_field2
Hilton Ratcliffe:
“DISCOVERY” OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
On Thursday, 11 February, 2016, a group of some one thousand scientists co-authored a paper announcing that the LIGO interferometric array had after more than a decade of fruitlessly accumulating data , positively identified the signature of gravitational waves coming from a deep space event. This was a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915 in a landmark paper henceforward known as The General Theory of Relativity. I have known for some time that results are being attributed to observations made with instruments that were inherently incapable of doing so. My scepticism is well known, and I consequently received dozens of requests to publish my view of the matter. In general, layman’s terms, here it is.
My analysis:
The instruments that comprise LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) were set up to try to achieve a specific goal, consequent to the predictions of General Relativity Theory. The mirrors in the interferometer are set 4km apart. The expected variation in that distance would be 10^-18 metres or 10^-15 millimetres. In layman’s language, they are looking for a change in distance over the four kilometre separation of ONE THOUSAND TRILLIONTH OF A MILLIMETRE!
The change in distance equates to a required design sensitivity of the LIGO interferometer of one part in 10^-21. That is, a resolution of ONE PART in ONE BILLION TRILLION.
Let’s try to put the expected variation into some sort of comprehensible perspective. The diameter of a hydrogen atom is obtained experimentally at 10^-7 mm. Therefore, Ligo seeks to measure a distance that is ONE HUNDRED MILLIONTH of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Put another way, if the change were one hundred million times greater than the one they claim to have measured, it would be the same as adding or subtracting a SINGLE ATOM to or from the four kilometre distance separating the mirrors.
That is probably unimaginable to most people, so let’s try to add further perspective.
The best precision mirror surfaces are polished to match the ideal, nearly parabolic surface to about 25 nanometers – about 3 ten-thousandths of the width of a human hair. That is incredibly fine tolerance, but let’s compare it with the difference in length that LIGO claims to measure. A nanometer is a unit of spatial measurement that is 10^-9 meter, or one billionth of a meter. Take it down one level – a nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre.
The most precisely polished astrophysical mirrors, like those used in LIGO, can have peaks 25 nm above and below the theoretical surface plane of the mirror. 50 nm is a BILLION TIMES bigger than the gravitational wave signature. In practical terms, it is impossible to measure the distance between the two mirrors in each interferometer (actually said to be 3999.5 metres) to the required tolerance so they have had to take an average, which is guesswork.
There are other conditions which change the distance between the mirrors by many orders of magnitude greater than the anticipated gravitational wave fluctuation. There is change in ambient temperature as the array goes through day and night cycles. Waves caused by seismic fluctuations are ever present, disturbing the separation. There are also anthropogenic waves, resulting from trucking, blasting, mining, and railroads, for example.
Then there are the influences affecting the light and its frequency that lie between the source of the radiation being measured and the Earth. There are all manner of objects, systems, and force fields in inter-galaxian space. These are not precisely known; some are completely invisible to us, yet they have a profound effect on light signal that simply cannot be quantified by measurement.
The LIGO instruments have all sorts of protective devices shielding them from extraneous kinetics and noise, but to filter those impediments out without fiddling with the sought-after signal, the LIGO scientists would have to guess their magnitude. That is not an empirically sound way to arrive at an accurate answer.
Ligo cost over $620 million US to construct. Reasearch grants and operating costs take that figure to well over one billion US dollars. Hold that thought.
To summarise, paraphrasing the words of Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg in reference to Edwin Hubble’s initial interpretation of galaxian redshifts, “…it seems they knew the answer they wanted to get.”
Hilton Ratcliffe
Hilton
What makes this almost unbelievably small distance measurement possible is that it is not an absolute but a relative measurement. The sources of error that you describe, come out in the wash, since both laser beams are subject to them just the same. That’s the whole point of LIGO. Relative measurement can be hugely more sensitive than absolute measurement.
I was forwarding that from the famous scientific critic, Hilton Ratcliffe. The point he makes should not be considered in isolation of other phenomena. You might consider speaking with the specialists who map out gravity fields, who will likely inform you that the readings reported for this gravity wave detection are actually much smaller than the anomalies that are routinely detected as coming form the source of our own Earth.
so they have had to take an average, which is guesswork.
Well, that just gives away the ignorance of the author.
Taking an average in signal processing is NOT guesswork unless you are Michael Mann. Determining the signal noise ratio of any known system is well within the math and experience of modern physics. Your cell phone, your digital music device, your digital TV, NONE of them would work if you just “took an average, which is guesswork”.
I really wish there was a way to teach basic signal processing techniques to the layman. I’ve done the hardware and software design for delta sigma converters and taken a graduate level class in signal processing. I believe the results. I’ve googled for days to try and find something I could post here to teach the layman about the basics of signal processing, to no avail. It’s not very accessible math I’m afraid.
Michael Mann has done more of a disservice to science than any single person except maybe for Lysenko. (they are in the same ballpark). His stupid hockey stick has put unwarranted skepticism in any signal processing based result in science, despite the fact that items you use every day like your cell phone, digital music player, and TV all use the same well known math techniques that LIGO uses.
They just scaled it up to 4 kilometers, and took petabytes of data. That’s the only difference between your digital TV and this experiment, as far as the math goes.
Peter
The damage the CAGW fraud has caused to the belief in scientific integrity is beginning to show !!
I don’t think people’s stupidity is caused by CAGW…
..So, if some one doesn’t exactly agree with you, they are stupid ??? You must be a liberal !
People don’t need me to expose their stupidity. They do a marvelous job on that all by themselves.
Here, let me correct that for you. It should have been ” I don’t need people to show me how arrogant I am, I do a marvelous job all by myself ! “…There, fixed it for ya !!
You put yourself firmly in the know-it-all-based-on-nothing group.
Please show me where I even hinted at knowing anything ??
so you admit you don’t know anything…
Hmmm, let me make it simple for you..Show me where I claimed to be a know it all arrogant buffon like you !!
Now that is funny!
Personally I don’t think that the recording at two separate sites, at the same time, the same signal wavetrain from a spinning and colliding pair of black holes, could be an artefact. When this wavetrain corresponds almost exactly to what is simulated for such an event. This looks pretty solid to me.
It was a small spacequake.
Re: “This looks pretty solid to me … It was a small spacequake.”
I get the sense that many people agree with it simply because they have not taken the time to listen to the numerous academic whistleblowers and scientific critics who have been speaking out on issues just like this for many years now.
For instance, Martín López Corredoira … astrophysicist / philosopher / academic whistleblower, published more than 50 cosmology and astrophysical papers on subjects like the structure of the Milky Way, stellar populations, and observational astronomy topics which required analytical calculations, computer simulations, statistics, photometrical and spectroscopical observations and analysis, wrote in The Twilight of the Scientific Age …
“A superficial view may lead us to think that we live in the golden age of science but the fact is that the present-day results of science are mostly mean, unimportant, or just technical applications of ideas conceived in the past.”
“There are several reasons to write about this topic. First of all, because I feel that things are not as they seem, and the apparent success of scientific research in our societies, announced with a lot of ballyhoo by the mass media, does not reflect the real state of things.”
“Creativity is blocked. It seems that the system gives the message that no ideas are needed. It seems the system, through its higher authorities, is saying that science only needs to work out the details. It is accepted that the basis of what is now known is correct, that present-day theories are more or less correct and only manpower is needed to sort out some parameters of minor importance. A Copernican revolution is totally unthinkable within the current system.”
“Science is not a direct means for reaching the truth. Science works with hypotheses rather than with truths. This fact, although recognized, is usually forgotten. It gives rise to the creation of certain key groups within science which think that their hypotheses are indubitably solid truths, and think that the hypotheses of other minority groups are just extravagant or crackpot ideas … all through history, and even now, there have been many instances of discussion about how to interpret aspects of nature, with various possible options without a clear answer, in which a group of scientists have opted to claim their position is the good or orthodox one while other positions are heresies.”
“the more controversial the topic, and the more of a challenge it is to established ideas, and the newer the approach, then the more difficult will be the problems in publishing it, and the higher the probability of its being rejected. Gillies (2008, ch. 2) argues that when a researcher makes an advance which is later seen as a key innovation and a major breakthrough, a peer review may very well judge it to be absurd and of no values. As noted by Van Flandern (1993, ch. 21), peer review in journals interferes with the objective examination of extraordinary ideas on their merits. Maddox (1993), who was editor of the journal Nature, has said that if Newton submitted his theory of gravity to a journal today, it would almost certainly be rejected as being too preposterous to believe. On the one hand, there is a failure to select novel ideas (Brezis, 2007; Horrobin, 1990). On the other hand, the refereeing process trends to conformity.”
This researcher has nothing to be disgruntled about. He’s a successful academic trying to inform the public that things are not as they seem. So far, the public continues to ignore these people.
or just technical applications of ideas conceived in the past.”
The LIGO project is certainly in this category. How far in the past though is critical. There’s been significant coevolution between compute power and signal processing techniques in the last 25 years. So just like mapping the genome, the compute power an algorithms were only available in the last 10-15 years.
Corredoira has some good points. However, there are some new synthesis going on despite his skepticism.
Peter
Anthony you may want to close this thread, it does the site no credit. I have never seen science so butchered by layman who actually don’t even remotely understand it.
Lets start with the basic that if LIGO has reached detection threshold the data is going to pour in and layman saying I don’t believe is going to look rather stupid.
If you goto Lubos website he has a screencap of the next two events to be published GW151012 ( October 12th 2015) and GW151226 (December 26 2015).
LIGO has all stated they will make detection alerts and data public as soon as the 4 detectors are online which he also covers.
layman saying I don’t believe is going to look rather stupid.
Perhaps it is useful to have that stupidity exposed for all to see…
Leif you asked,
=======================================================
“It is also not rational to say that they should reject said result based on their ignorance?
But, that said, it seems to me that the reactions by many here are not based on rationality anyway”
===========================================================
No, they should neither accept or reject, but “skepticism” is “questioning” and many stated categorically they do not know, but are not ready to accept. This is, IMV rational. Likewise in my comment here… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/14/a-triumph-of-science-first-detection-of-the-gravitational-wave/comment-page-1/#comment-2145394 … I explained how cynicism can also be rational, and it also may be overblown.
Most of the “skeptical” comments I found to be humble and rational. A few were over blown and, IMV, overconfident in their skepticism, but in no way is WUWT shammed. The failure of rational scientist to more universally condemn the science destroying farce of CAGW is, in my view, shameful and partially responsible for the few over reactions,
No, they should neither accept or reject, but “skepticism” is “questioning” and many stated categorically they do not know, but are not ready to accept.
You cannot reject what you don’t know. To rationally reject something, you must know something about it.
Being SKEPTICAL of something and REJECTING something are not the same thing !! “Methinks thou dost protest too much” – A Famous Quote by William Shakespeare
Since we are all skeptical it comes down to whether we reject something. And that you can only do if you know something about it. If you don’t know anything, you cannot honestly reject it. That does not, of course, prevent people from doing it anyway, but such cannot be taken seriously.
..I, in no way, REJECT it, but I am SKEPTICAL of their claim !! Your argument made no sense !
We are all skeptical of everything, so your statement is void as far as that goes. The issue is whether you reject that of which you do not know anything.
Leif,
As an ignorant thickie, I’d like to ask you a question.
IF the experiment was to find gravitational waves, AND you state that gravitational waves can even be caused by hand-waving ,… (in other words, a statement of the bleedin’ obvious to the average ignoramus ) ,……then WHAT was the point of this experiment?
As others have said; gravitational signals from trucks on the adjacent highway were detected, so why do they need any more proof?
What was the point of directing the newly invented telescope towards the heavens and observe all the wonders there? LIGO opens a new window on the universe, just as the telescope, the radio telescope, spacecraft measurements opened windows on the universe for us to explore and marvel. To show us our place in the universe. To tell us how and when we got here. To expand our horizons to the infinite.
People here haven’t even gone and looked at the evidence.
Only Vuk has bothered to do so and come out with any scepticism.
The rest have just gone “Bah!. I don’t think that’s so”
It’s like those old curmudgeons who saw the Moon Landings on TV, looked out the window and couldn’t see the moon darkened by Armstrong’s Arse and so claimed it was faked.
Very unimpressive.
Only Vuk has bothered to do so and come out with any scepticism
And even that was incoherent.
TonyN if you understood GR you would understand that any motion of anything produces gravity waves just too small to measure, but exactly as Leif says.
The point of the experiment is to make a new “telescope” for want of a better word to see space in a different way.
Now they have achieved detection sensitivity every country, man and his dog will be scrambling to get one if they remotely are interested in science of the universe. That is why there will be 4 online by January 2017 and you can bet China won’t be left out of this … watch this space.
Leif,
Are you sure you are not Donald Trump in your spare time? Note, people continually calling others stupid sometimes sound stupid.
I have been called the ‘Donald Trump’ of solar physics. But, it does not take me to expose stupidity. The folks do that extremely well on their own. I’m sure that even you could recognize such when you see it.
Yes, and even you can probably see how it makes you look to to others.
You mean as a stout defender of scientific literacy and rational thought? I take that as a compliment.
Take it however it makes you feel best.
“To rationally reject something, you must know something about it.”
This is what laymen knows about gravitational waves.
1) Physicists have been trying to detect them for decades under the assumption that they are there.
2) Groups have claimed to have detected them in the past.
3) Those claims turned out to be false or inconclusive and completely overblown.
So please forgive the laymen for jumping straight to rejection after hearing the boy cry wolf for the tenth time; even if the laymen doesn’t even know what a wolf is they do know that the boy has been wrong the previous nine times.
I doubt there were many herptologists in the old west, yet somehow most people remained skeptical of the reported benefits of snake oil.
This is what laymen knows about gravitational waves.
1) Physicists have been trying to detect them for decades under the assumption that they are there.
2) Groups have claimed to have detected them in the past.
3) Those claims turned out to be false or inconclusive and completely overblown.
I doubt that laymen even know about the early claims, i.e. have read and studied them. Which ‘completely overblown’ claims would you care to link to?
And regardless, when scientists finally succeed, having learned from all the previous failures what it takes, we should laud them for enriching our view of the universe.
How about Weber’s 300+ signals of gravitational waves that were random noise? A little skepticism of his own results may have saved other researches from having to build expensive devices in order to try to replicate his data.
It’s acceptable human behavior to take past experiences and apply them to the present, it’s called wisdom and is severely under-rated. It’s therefore acceptable assume — without a vast knowledge of the subject –that some unforeseen variable or subjectivity is creating a false positive, again.
If I recall correctly, many of us here were quite skeptical of the BICEP-2 data “proving” gravitational waves (proving cosmic expansion I think?), but I don’t remember reading of your skepticism. Very few people, if anyone, was as qualified as you were to accept or reject the results, yet those results still turned out to be false.
Weber deserves credit for trying and for inspiring others to do better. The continuous improvements over 40+ years have now culminated in success. As simple as that. And the BICEP data was marginal to begin with and data collection is still going on and may still produce results. The criticism here back then was [just as today] not rational, but was dominated by big-bang deniers, not valid skepticism.
Big Bang Deniers? SMH
So you are saying it’s wrong to question a theory that has had its problems explained away with arm-waves and imagined circumstances that bend or break the laws of physics as we know them.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269314009381
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218271814500588
What’s that saying about if it looks and sounds like a duck it must be a duck?
So you are saying it’s wrong to question a theory that has had its problems explained away with arm-waves and imagined circumstances that bend or break the laws of physics as we know them.
If you actually read your links, you’ll find that they propose the break the laws of physics as we know them by adding untested modifications. There are hundreds of papers that propose modifications and ad-hoc fixes to try to circumvent the Standard Model, none of them convincing nor generally accepted.
“If you actually read your links, you’ll find that they propose the break the laws of physics as we know them by adding untested modifications.”
If you say so; I can’t argue with you. But can’t you say the same thing about any paper involving the perplexity of the very early universe?
The very early universe was quite simple and uniform. All the complexity came later as the universe cooled.
Re: “Lets start with the basic that if LIGO has reached detection threshold the data is going to pour in and layman saying I don’t believe is going to look rather stupid.”
But, we’re well far away from such a situation because the signal was not even sourced to a particular event. And in fact, this is one of the key criticisms being made by the critics. The only certainty at this point is that the NSF’s most expensive project is going to ask for more money.
String Theory provides a explanation for the missing heat in global warming.
String theory predicts that we live in a 10-dimensional universe of which 4 dimensions are observable. What if the heat is disappearing into the 6-dimensional non-observable dimensions? This sound a lot better than “the dog ate my homework” disappeared to the bottom of the ocean explanation. 🙂
At least the observations of missing heat match the prediction of String Theory. This gives us more confidence in String Theory.
/yesireallyneedasarctag
Bill Illis’s comment, and Chris Reeve’s following comment are both (although contradictory), informative from a layman’s perspective.
An incredibly powerful event from 1.3 billion years ago and from 1.3 billion light years away, is believed to have caused an incredibly small .2 second distortion in incredibly sensitive instruments 1.3 billion years later. Thinks that make you say ??? The comment on the timing of the readings from far apart locations is intriguing. Again, how often can we expect to receive and analyze such events?
David A
How often? Well, more often the further we look back. What is the “sampling area” of LIGO? Answer – distance away of detected event, squared, x 4, x pi. It’s the area of the sphere emitting signals to us from a time past corresponding to the sphere radius in lightyears.
So was it a fluke that LIGO detected the black hole collision shortly after being switched on? If you survey a “surface” of space with an area of a billion squared x 4 x pi lightyears, the very rare can become quite common.
As someone commented above – such signals of extraordinary cosmic events will likely be detected quite frequently in the days ahead – confounding the doubters of this fantastic scientific invention – or maybe just driving them further into exotic conspiracy-land.
belousov, thank you, however, by my saying…
“The comment on the timing of the readings from far apart locations is intriguing”…
I was not referring to how quickly they made those successful readings, but that two identical detections were made, the timing of which corresponded to how fast gravity waves (speed of light apparently) travels between those two points of detection. Never the less, your answer on the size of the field surveyed is informative in a different respect.
And the best of all: because the two site have opposite orientations [on purpose] we would expect the signal to be inverted at the other site, which it actually was.
I’m skeptical.
Oh oh Jerry, lsvalgaard’s going to come after you and say ” You are a REJECTIONIST ” !! LOL
We are all skeptical [except the believers in Electric Universe and other pseudo-scientific nonsense]. So are the 1000 authors and collaborators on the direct discovery of gravitational waves. They put their skepticism to good use in weeding out all the instrumental problems before announcing their result.
Your definition is twisted beyond belief !!!…
People who use more than one exclamation point are usually just being emotional rather than rational !
I admit it..you’re arrogance gets under my skin ( notice I did not argue with you ! ) LOL
Your not allowed to be ” SKEPTICAL ” !! …..Go figure …
Leif is playing you around in a very technical way so you make bigger fools of yourself. He is quite aware of the background and I suggest if you don’t want to make fools of yourself you consider carefully what is happening.
What you call an experiment isn’t really an experiment it is a device … it moved from an experiment the moment it detected the first wave.
..Grammar is not your forte’ I see ! As for Leif, he is just an arrogant ( but intelligent ) liberal that does not like other people to have opinions that differ from his!
Anthony seriously talk to Lubos or a scientist you trust, you need to shut this down. Half the comments on here are going to be a field day for Lew and Co in the coming weeks.
Hmmm, maybe we should pass a law making it illegal to be skeptical now ?
RICO?
So I guess Lewandowsky would ask “Do you believe the moon landing was faked?”
Do you want to put limits on your skeptical or is it okay to be skeptical to the max of everything?
Ldb, are you God ? What makes you think YOU get to decide what some one can think or say ?
I didn’t play GOD and give an answer I asked you a question. What is wrong with the question?
If some people think the Moon landings were fake, then they are free to think that and I am free to think that they are a few beers short of a six pack ! Why would you put LIMITS on being skeptical ? Who gets to decide ? YOU ?
Who cares what that bunch think? At least one of that bunch (seaice1@ur momisugly 2:46 am) has already been here gleaning “evidence” from an anonymous commenter who’s never been seen before. If Lew and crew played it straight, there might be something to worry about, but they don’t, being propagandists.
The further away – and further back in time – that LIGO looks, the more it will see.
At 1.3 billion years ago and the same number of lightyears away, the area of space effectively being “surveyed” is 1.3 billion, squared, x 4, x pi, square lightyears.
Thus the very rare and exceptional events can – and possibly will – become frequent observations. Stay tuned…
re Paul Clark, Phodges
What the modern-physics-is-all-wrong-and-I-am-right-based-solely-on-my-assertions crowd invariably fails to understand is how interlinked is all of physics.
Modern GPS has to take into account both Special Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR) effects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System#Special_and_General_Relativity
in order to work.
The detection of gravitational waves only one in a long line of tests of GR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity
GR has successfully passed all experimental tests to-date. That it why it continues to be the leading theory of how
“Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.”
~ John A. Wheeler
Physics has always been an interplay between theory and experiment. Physics would not be science without either one. Electrical power and wire/wireless communication is based on Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. The transistors in our computers are designed based on condensed matter-quantum mechanics theory.
These modern-physics-is-all-wrong-and-I-am-right-based-solely-on-my-assertions types are so common that physicists have developed a scale to rank them:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
As for the cost, I’d say that compared to most projects the US taxpayers got a great deal: $1 billion to detect gravitational waves compared to, say, $1.3 billion in farm subsidies to people who don’t farm or $1 trillion plus for a plane that can barely fly.
The things we’ve seen and done and learned in my lifetime…
whatever we ultimately ascribe as the cause for this detection with our advanced/rudimentary instruments, who knows what knowledge this will lead to in future.
Whilst I appreciate Leif’s answer to half of my ignorant questions, but he, and the media reports, have left me ignorant as to the actual purpose of this experiment.
I repeat my question; IF it was to detect gravitational waves, AND they had to filter out gravitational signals from passing trucks, then clearly the experiment was a success WHEN they detected the trucks. And THAT woudl have been the biggie.
BUT, if the purpose of the grand hyper-denouement was “to show off the sensitivity of the instrument via a phenonemon that is only explicable by a now-unobservable yet theoretically possible event, … (and by the way we measured gravitational waves from known local repeatable sources , such as a truck,) ….
….. it leaves me feeling that Science per se is becoming irredeemably corrupted by the chase for mere publicity.
Now, what would REALLY restore my charity, and thus my support of funding their efforts, is if they could tell us e.g. they can detect a tree falling in the forest.
In summary, the responsible guys have unthinkingly employed the hype-merchants with their techniques developed by the AGWologists. And so, they have made what may well be a wonderful event into a tawdry grant-justification sideshow. I mean, they make themselves detectably stupid by even the most stupid, without benefit of a Leifometer.
We all use Einstein’s theory every day. Modern society runs on Einstein ‘rails’, so it is important to verify that Einstein was right. The direct detection of gravitational waves is a significant step in that verification process. In addition, the discovery opens a new window on the universe. You might well have asked: “what was the purpose of inventing the telescope and looking at the heavens”. To learn and to wonder.
In summary, the responsible guys have unthinkingly employed the hype-merchants
Did you actually watch the announcement? There was no hype, just sober info. But it deserved hype, because this is one of the most important discovery in decades.
Lef, I thank you for your reply.
To make it plain, are you saying that this is not a ‘first’ for the detection of gravitational waves?
This is the first direct observation on the Earth of a wave passing over us. We discovered indirect evidence for grav. waves a long time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1913%2B16
Ok layman simple answer LIGO is a new sort of telescope. We have optical telescopes, then we had radio telescopes and now we have a gravity telescope.
So it’s something that can produce images of areas of space in a different way.
So how do you feel about funding for optical and radio telescopes?
Optical and radio telescopes are proven instruments. There is no proof YET that what was detected was a gravitational wave, that is why some are SKEPTICAL !
You know not whereof you speak. If it looks like a duck, it waddles like a duck, it quacks like a duck, we call it a duck. The spiraling into each other, the collision, and the final ringing decay is a very specific signature of two black holes merging. And that was precisely what was observed. Many more events have already been observed. So, yes, the matter has been proven by the usual standard of what we will consider to be a proof.
I thought you were skeptical Marcus? With especially a radio telescope what proof was given to you I thought some scientist just told you it works?
Many scientist have reviewed the results over a long period of time..I really have to wonder what skin you both have in this game ! Your hostility to anyone that doesn’t agree with you is very suspicious !
RE :Optical and radio telescopes
Leif, thanks again for your response. I too must make it plain where my own nonscience ( aka stupidity) detector went off the scale;
The title of this post is;
“A triumph of science: first detection of the gravitational wave”
But clearly, as they have had to filter out the gravitational signals from passing trucks,etc., …IT IS NOT THE FIRST !
And if, on dehyping, the prosaic truth is that they have detected something that can only be explained by an uncorroboratable source which could be long ago and far away and invisible, or nearer and closer, or even an artefact. But, they claim the long-ago & far away & invisible source. And to be strict about it, you have to discount that,because it nobody else can see it, or will ever be able to see it.So it boils down to the fact that they are CLAIMING an improvement in their instrumental technique.
Whilst this is a worthy claim, why LIE that it is THE FIRST? .. or at least why didn’t they prevent their PR guys from doing so? Why have they allowed themselves to be portrayed as metaphysicians, on a par with AGWologists?
If they really want to build trust, why not show an equally impressive result from controllable masses … i.e trucks, etc.
To mangle a metaphor: why not start with the Boojums because that way, you will avoid the Snarks.
.
But clearly, as they have had to filter out the gravitational signals from passing trucks,etc., …IT IS NOT THE FIRST !
those signals are not gravitational waves and no single truck influences measurements taken 3002 km apart. Get off your fixation.
Did they say they had to filter out gravitational effects from passing trucks, or was it just ground vibration effects from passing trucks.
Many many years ago you could buy an interesting LP record called ” Out of this World ”
One side contained audio recordings of electrical atmospheric effects caused by lightning strikes around the planet. Things called, whistlers, howlers, dawn chorus , and many others.
The other side of the record carried seismic recordings made with a special tape recorder. The tape was run at 0.02 inches per second while seismometer signals from several locations were fed into it. Then the tape was played back at the normal speed of 7 1/2 inches per second, and the resultant now audio sound was recorded on the LP record.
It sounded like thunder with all kinds of reverberations resulting from the seismic waves echoing around the planet. You were literally listening to the seismic acoustic properties of the earth.
One of those seismic recording sites was somewhere in Nevada out in the boondocks. Sometimes you could hear sounds that sounded like listening to an insect chomping on some food or other and magnified up. Occasionally you could hear a whistle that sounded like about a mid piano frequency.
The chomping sound was eventually traced to a back hoe sort of piece of heavy road machinery digging out a new road section some miles from the seismometer site, which was picking up the ground waves from the digging. The audio whistle was more of a puzzle, but when frequency shifted it came out to about one Hertz in original frequency.
This was eventually traced to a single cylinder gasoline engine, that was running at about 60 RPM speed and driving a refrigerator compressor in a factory that made blocks of ice.
The occasional breaks in the whistle tone turned out to occur on the weekends, when the compressor was turned off and the plant shut down for the weekend.
So any piece of equipment like a LIGO that is extremely sensitive to mechanical vibration that disturbs a 4 km track, is going to respond to a truck passing by.
BUT it is not detecting gravitation waves from the passing mass of the truck, it is just hearing the road noise of the vehicle, amplified to extreme levels by an instrument of incredible sensitivity.
The stated resolution of this interferometer still astonishes me, as I try to compare that with other interferometric measurements, such as Michelson’s measurement of the standard metre bar in Paris.
But I have learned to not reject something just because it astonishes me. I’ve heard of people using a single atom trapped by laser beams, to make an accelerometer of astronomically fast response to accelerations. Now they use a heavy atom so that it is more sensitive to gravity or accelerations, and minimize its sensitivity to the only other force of concern, any Coulomb effects.
But with such accelerometers you could detect extremely small variations in gravity say for looking down an oil well hole for local gravity anomalies that might lead to where the oil is. And of course other things like accurate navigation.
So I’m hoping to understand eventually just how they get all of that sensitivity.
G
And they have real-time input from 200,000 channels monitoring the site, the building, the Earth, the Sun, the works, in order to detect noise above the usual background.
In the press report I did not see a mention of the observed/calculated velocity of the ‘discovered’ gravity wave(s)
John
derived from the difference in time of detection at the two instruments and the distance between them. It is in the published paper.
which is here:
http://www.leif.org/research/Grav-Waves-Detected.pdf
Thanks for the link, will read more about it.
It was only determined by the time of detection between the two detectors. The result was consistent with the speed of light but to be more precise they need an exact fix on the source from a radio or optical telescope.
The Fermi gamma ray burst of interest was within 0.4 sec timing over a distance of 1.3 billion years, which would have locked it some ridiculous fraction from c. Unfortunately they couldn’t establish scientific certainty between the two events so it will be an ongoing effort.
lsvalgaard on February 15, 2016 at 8:26 am
– – – – – –
Leif,
Thanks for the link to the paper.
I did a word search on the paper for terms like ‘speed’, ‘velocity’, ‘c’ and ‘rate of travel’, etc. I found no explicit statement of their observation of the speed of the gravity wave that they reported they detected.
John
How about reading the paper [what a concept !]. The time delay is 6.9 milliseconds over a distance of 3002 km. Depending on the orientation of the waves the delay at the speed of light could be anything from 0 to 10 milliseconds.
Leif,
I know Einstein’s theories have speed of light constraints. My question is what is their observed actual speed of the gravity wave they reported they detected.
John
John, this sounds like a desperate straw man. The predicted shape depends on the speed of light and would not match the observed signal if the wave propagated at any other speed. But I’ll go further: if the gravitational wave did not go at the speed of light, THAT would be an even bigger discovery, bigger than Einstein, bigger than anything else in Physics. The least sensational claim is that such a Biggie is not in the works, so we go with that.
If something is a wave it has speed and amplitude and frequency. No straw man.
Clarity for me on the observed speed of their observed gravity wave is of interest to me. Clarity I have not yet achieved, but over time I will achieve it.
John
Gravitational wave, not Gravity wave. If the wave front hit perpendicular to the line connecting the two observatory the speed would be 435,000 km/sec. If it hit parallel to the line the delay would be zero for any speed. The actual speed is thus between near 0 and 435,000 km/sec, but is not a problem for the discovery. The predicted curves rely on the speed being exactly ‘c’ and since the match the observed ones so closely, there is really no wiggle room for any other value. And as I said, if the speed were not ‘c’, the discovery would be even BIGGER. Every physicist dreams about proving Einstein wrong, so far none have succeeded. On the contrary, the recent discovery [no quotes] is yet another feather in Einstein’s hat.
Leif, john asked a very direct question regarding the actual speed of the gravitational wave detected. Your response, “John, this sounds like a desperate straw man.” was totally uncalled for. Your answer,
====================================================
“…If the wave front hit perpendicular to the line connecting the two observatory the speed would be 435,000 km/sec. If it hit parallel to the line the delay would be zero for any speed. The actual speed is thus between near 0 and 435,000 km/sec, but is not a problem for the discovery… and “the 3002 km distance traversed in 0.0069 seconds is a maximum speed of 435,000 km/sec, but since the wave probably didn’t hit straight on, the real speed would be slower”… and …The time delay is 6.9 milliseconds over a distance of 3002 km. Depending on the orientation of the waves the delay at the speed of light could be anything from 0 to 10 milliseconds”
=========================================================
were all informative, however the sarcasm of “How about reading the paper [what a concept !].” and the “John, this sounds like a desperate straw man.”
are both flawed and unnecessary. There was no straw man to the simple question of. “what is their observed actual speed of the gravity wave they reported they detected.” ( If you disagree please explain the straw man. A straw man is an assertion of what someone is saying, which they are in fact not saying. A simple direct question is not a straw man.)
Your communication would be more effective if was not so insulting and illogical. Your answer should of started out with words to the affect that “We simply do not know yet the exact speed, it is predicted to be the speed of light, and the observation so far confirms that likelihood; with new multiple detections of singular events we will be able to triangulate the signal more accurately, but all indications so far are that it will be the speed of light, followed of course by your details I quoted. Why be pompous?
What I read in John’s persistence was a desire to throw doubt on the discovery [John can correct me if I’m wrong on that]. When I go to the trouble of providing the link, I expect that people read it. The information needed for an assessment of the speed [the 6.9 millisecond time difference] was in the paper. If someone is really interested, the paper is the place to go to. It is not too much to ask for that the John makes an effort too to find what he seeks. Finally, it is not up to you to lecture on my behavior. Go after the issue, not after the person.
Leif says,
=================================================
“Finally, it is not up to you to lecture on my behavior. Go after the issue, not after the person.”
=================================================
Interesting, coming from an individual who regularly insults other individuals and groups of individuals. (The WUWT community as a whole, at times almost Mosher like) Your demeanor weakens your otherwise rational arguments, and I will lecture lecturer’s when I choose. (We all get what we deserve correct?)
My decision to “lecture” you is indeed influenced by your consistent hypocrisy in following your own advice. and by the fact that I see this as making your communication ineffective, which is a shame as you have a great deal of knowledge. There have been many informative comments by others that did not resort to your snark. (Peter Sable for instance)
John Whitman asked a simple direct question. He already told you what he meant by it here… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/14/a-triumph-of-science-first-detection-of-the-gravitational-wave/comment-page-1/#comment-2145657
Well, some people get a kick out of doing what you are doing. Instead of bringing some science to the table, they wallop in personal attacks. Your ilk is best ignored.
Oh, and BTW, John told you he had searched the paper and not found a clear answer. Instead of clarifying to him how and why that was correct, and confirming that further triangulation was required, yet, etc… you chastised him about his understandable and correct confusion that an exact propagation speed was not yet confirmed.
I looked for but have not yet found a listing of exactly what other possible signals were accounted for. I was curious if for instance atmospheric pressure would influence the phase harmony in such incredibly small measurements. But teachers such as your self actually discourage questions and a love of learning.
I was curious if for instance atmospheric pressure would influence the phase harmony in such incredibly small measurements.
The legs are in an ultrahigh vacuum.
Actually Leif I was not talking of that change, but of the ability of disparate atmospheric change to affect the deformation of land. Over the ocean changes in air pressure from extreme high to extreme low can, excluding other factors, change sea level by well over one meter. http://weather.mailasail.com/Franks-Weather/Pressure-And-Tides The affect on the land is of course much smaller, but then again we are talking incredibly small measurements. So I was considering the possibility that atmospheric pressure changes could affect the land beneath the the experiment, just as I would think lunar earth tidal forces would, only of course to a much smaller degree.
LdB on February 15, 2016 at 8:47 am
– – – – – – –
LdB,
Thanks for the discussion.
It just seems to me that the speed of the gravity wave that the said they detected is necessary info if they did indeed detected the wave.
So, I seek a clear statement of the speed of the gravity wave which they reported they detected.
John
the 3002 km distance traversed in 0.0069 seconds is a maximum speed of 435,000 km/sec, but since the wave probably didn’t hit straight on, the real speed would be slower. The theory says the speed of light and that is that. When we have one more LIGO in place we can triangulate and get a better determination, but there is no reason to doubt that the speed is precisely ‘c’.
Leif,
Yes, Einstein’s theory says the gravity wave should be at the speed of light. I am interested in what speed did the gravity wave they observed have.
John
anywhere between zero and 435,000 km/sec.
435,000 km/sec?
c=299,792 km /s
distance 3002 km. Delay 0.0069 seconds. 3002/0.0069 = 435,000 km/sec. This is if the wave front is perpendicular to the line connecting the two sites. If at an angle the speed is less, e.g. 299,792 km /sec. You can even [maybe] calculate the angle from this. Think before you comment.
..So, gravitational waves go faster than the speed of light ? I knew something was wrong !!
435,000 km/sec would breach one of boundary conditions ( 0 and 299,792 km/s).
So let’s have a go.
The lowest frequency was 35 Hz for the initial part of the wave, the wavelength lambda = c/f =299,792,000/35 = 8,562,857m = 8,500km
Distance between two places is 3002km , which means the wavelength is 2.85 x distance.
This would give a minimum delay 0 ms for perpendicular wave front) and maximum delay 1/2.85f = 10ms (for parallel wf).
They measured 6.9ms, giving the angle of wave front impact of about 46.5 degrees.
At least these numbers make sense.
From the above (if correct) it should be possible to calculate distance, and than when the event took place, I don’t know if those numbers are quoted in the paper (lot of noisy statistic in there).
Perhaps next project.
Too noisy to tell.
Explanation: perpendicularly moving wave front would hit both places at the same time, parallel moving wave front would hit two places with a maximum delay of one wavelength, wave travels in direction of the line connecting two places.
John,
Speed of light.
Presumably using distance H1-L1 (page4) and phase difference between two signals propagating at speed of light, by using triangulation one could find distance of the event. Now knowing distance and using c, it can be determined when the event took place. If it was more than 14.5 billion or less than a day earlier, their calculations would be wrong. Since there are three variables mutually dependant, velocity of propagation, distance and time, I assume they had no choice but to accept that the gravitational wave propagates at velocity equal to that of light.
I stand to be corrected.
I got there to late, while I was reading bit of the article and writing comment Dr. S posted reply
No need to continue to put foot in mouth. Learn from the paper and the discussion. Don’t try to talk about things you don’t know anything about.
Hey vukcevic, love your website !
vukcevic on February 15, 2016 at 9:20 am
– – – – – – – –
vukcevic,
I do not know yet if their observed speed of the observed gravity wave is important in their ‘discovery’, in the sense of important where it may represent unexpected knowledge predicted by Einstein’s theory. I am asking questions and looking at the paper and at comments here to find out.
John
Dr. S
Try not to be rude to St. Pete
when you get at the pearly gate
He’ll get what he deserves as everybody else.
Mr. Whitman
Answers at 9.10 and 9.26 to your question led me to believe you might not get any further, and I honestly thought my comment might help. I shall not interfere again, I’m in enough trouble as it is.
With regards.
m.v.
lsvalgaard February 15, 2016 at 10:09 am
He’ll get what he deserves as everybody else.
Doc am going to say a pray for St Peter.
Funny if anyone had looked at any seismic records for earthquakes they would have seen that there are TWO waves. kind of hard to mistake. Now as to Clyde & Cletus both firing up their their newly re built 1967 Pontiac Firebirds at the exact time, AND leaving 175 feet of rubber, well,,I’m more skeptical of that. Simple fact being just to start the engine is longer then 1/5 second. And both would have different preferences as to parts suppliers. and fuel
Last to those pointing out previous Oops, no one wakes up it the morning and says “Gee I want to ruin my career.
The boys and girls who worked on this project put their all into it. They are not rent seekers. They are not taking data others compiled and rewriting it to show what they want. They are the Pioneers. Cut them some slack. They deserve the benefit of the doubt in at lease that they have done their job right and with integrity
Myself I cross my fingers and hope they got it right. They worked hard.
michael
vukcevic, you really think he’d make it to the Pearly Gates ? I was thinking probably the other gates, where his rude comments would be gleefully accepted !
Svalgard,
re your 9.07
“those signals are not gravitational waves ”
I asked you the difference between gravity waves and gravitational waves, upthread.
Try reading what you are replying to.
It would make you look as if you actually understood what is being communicated to you..
Google is your friend. Are you too lazy to just look it up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave
“In fluid dynamics, gravity waves are waves generated in a fluid medium or at the interface between two media when the force of gravity or buoyancy tries to restore equilibrium.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave
“In physics, gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime which propagate as waves, travelling outward from the source”
Svalgard,
This post headline says ; “A triumph of science: first detection of the gravitational wave”
Despite your claimed literality, you still haven’t answered the question:
Was this, or was this not, the FIRST detection of a disturbance in the gravitational field ( aka a ‘wave’).?
Your question is ill-posed. A gravitational wave is not just a disturbance in the gravitational field of a body. I gave you links to the definition of a gravitational wave. Did you read it? And the first direct observation made here on the Earth in a laboratory was indeed made on 14 Sept. 2015. The first indirect observation was made back in 1974, but some people try to ward off such inconvenient facts by saying that that was not a ‘real’ observation. They no longer have that excuse.
BTW, the Earth in its orbit about the Sun is also giving off gravitational waves to the tune of 200 Watt.
Gravity waves move at light speed.
No, gravitational waves do. Gravity waves are something completely different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave
Svalgaard,
“….. the first direct observation made here on the Earth in a laboratory was indeed made on 14 Sept. 2015”.
So, at last, you agree that the claim of being the FIRST detection of gravitational waves is WRONG.
It has been like pulling teeth to educate you in detecting truth from hype. , …but it has been worth the effort to have you admit to actually bringing yourself to agreeing wth me.
And BTW, a moving truck really will emanate gravitational waves … as does your handwaving,
The event on 14 Sept, 2015 was the FIRST direct observation of a gravitational wave by an instrument here on Earth. This we can agree on. Most people would consider that important for the reality of the event, in contrast to the indirect inference of 40 years ago.
Doc
Ligo said it started on 18th of September. (scroll to the ens of the web page)
we do not need ‘ligogate’ and I hope that it turns out to be OK after all, but detailed explanations are required.
They owe you no explanation, if you do not care to read their paper.
Nothing is ‘required’. No need to try and sow mistrust. The information is there if you look.
“GW150914 occurred on September 14, 2015 09:50:45 UTC, 28 days into the eighth engineering run (ER8)z, 3 days into stable data collection with an accurate calibration, and 4 days preceding the scheduled start of the first observing run (O1). After the event was identified as a highly significant candidate, the software and hardware configuration of each LIGO detector was held fixed until enough coincident data had been collected to set a sufficiently accurate upper bound on the false-alarm rate using the time-shift technique described above. It took roughly six weeks to collect the required 16 days of coincident data because low noise operation of the detectors is disrupted by noisy environmental conditions (such as storms, earthquakes, high ground motion, or anthropogenic noise sources). During this six week period we only performed non-invasive maintenance that was required for instrument stability.”
So, take you conspiratory theories elsewhere.
look doc
I run dozens of engineering runs, they all counted for nothing, if equipment didn’t perform after official commissioning.
SO, an event in a distant galaxy has ripped an internet comments thread apart.
This could have such serious repercussions that the resultant explosion of fury may exceed the energy of the original event.
Clearly the inverse square law does not apply here.
We might as well have dropped both black holes into WUWT and destroyed the thread directly.
Maybe, at some point in millions of years this thread bust-up will be registered by a bust-up-interferometer-detector-array in a galaxy far far away… 🙂
Hey, I bet you can get a grant to study that !
The idea of the gravitational waves was borrowed from the french mathematician Henri Poincaré. Einstein later developped and gave sound bases to this theory.
Let’s see: thoretician comes up with conjecture, develops into a theory, which is then mathematically modeled to make certain predictions, which are then tested. Some rather quickly (sun bends light from distant star) and some (gravity waves) that are incredibly hard and take a long time (and are still subject to challenge). Sounds like science to me. When are our friends in the Climate Commune going to try this approach? For me, I’m not holding my breath …
I am an engineer and can appreciate the decades of engineering that went into LIGO. Sounds solid to me. And their model (via Einstein’s equations) matches exactly what they saw – at two places simultaneously. The size and info about the merger can come from the two identical waveforms via the equations. This is fantastic good science. Would the CAGW people could replicate it! But two black holes rotating/merging 1B light years away is a MUCH simpler system to model than our climate. I am really amazed at the “skepticism” about the solid science and engineering in this accomplishment.
Daughter has been to the LIGO facility down here on a school field trip. I didn’t even know it was in our parish despite being in the next town over. I’m proud it’s real science they are working on over there.
Lief stated …
“We are all skeptical [except the believers in Electric Universe and other pseudo-scientific nonsense]. So are the 1000 authors and collaborators on the direct discovery of gravitational waves. They put their skepticism to good use in weeding out all the instrumental problems before announcing their result.”
It’s worth noting that Wal Thornhill is one of the better skeptics, and is oftentimes the ONLY skeptic speaking up on a variety of astrophysical topics. Their group of course also follows in the footsteps of Hannes Alfven, who you claim to know, and who was of course one of the greatest astrophysical skeptics to ever live.
Your own comment, Lief, proposes that those who would have us model cosmic plasma like laboratory plasma phenomena (as having an E-field, a dynamic B-field and small electrical resistance) are pseudoscientists. Yet, when researchers conjecture that two black holes have merged very far away, and that this generated a waveform that is quite plainly far too small to observe given the modern accuracy of mirrors, you are nevertheless sure it is right.
How exactly does a person weed out all of the instrumental problems? How exactly does one exclude a TRANSIENT signal from the Earth’s core? The only way would be to actually localize the source of the event in space — which they’ve yet to do. So, why not demand that they do so before declaring that you believe them?
It’s worth noting that Wal Thornhill is one of the better skeptics
He is one of the better crackpots. Albeit sometimes a convincing one for the uninitiated.
Hannes Alfven, who you claim to know, and who was of course one of the greatest astrophysical skeptics to ever live
Unfortunately, times have moved on and Hannes were wrong on many things. You would do well to be skeptical of some of his theories. His everlasting fame is to show that in cosmic plasmas, the magnetic field is frozen hard to the matter; only when the length scale becomes small enough can the frozen-in condition be broken and electric currents generated with all the effects that only electricity can give you.
If you don’t agree with lsvalgaard then your a crackpot…Just ask him !! LOL
Don’t need to ask, the epithet is on the house, served free of charge.
Re: “And their model (via Einstein’s equations) matches exactly what they saw – at two places simultaneously.”
I would not read too much into this. Anybody who regularly reads this site should already understand that models can be designed in service of the expected outcome. In fact, that was much of the point of the Miles Mathis piece posted above.
Einstein’s equations “designed in service of the expected outcome.” really…?
Michelson-Morley exponentiated .
It’s important to remember that the geometry is defined by the equations so I dislike even the categorization into waves and particles .
For those of you who are signal processing nerds like myself, I recommend reading this detail on how they determined the signal from the noise:
https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P1500238/public/main
This paper is properly written – they outline all the ways they can think of that they might be wrong, and then showed how they they proved they were correct.
Peter
To all of the scientists on this board: I am as skeptical of this as I am about any newly touted scientific discovery. I am suspicious here because a bunch of scientists suddenly want to upgrade their equipment and need another government grant to do so. You can thank the CAGW crowd for that. After all, what better way to grease the skids when applying for a government grant than to do so after announcing a great success. I’m also suspicious because the MSM is touting this as the discovery of a century. Nothing new there at all.
Note that I am still willing to wait to see if this discovery is replicated and that it can be proven that they are measuring what they say they are measuring. I believe this is called the scientific method. Then I will get excited about this. I love reading about new scientific discoveries.
I am posting my opinion because I am quite sure a rather large number of fellow Americans feel the same way at this point. CAGW alarmists really have damaged the reputation of science.
rather large number of fellow Americans feel the same way
That, and combined with the generally low level of scientific literacy [e.g. about evolution and modern cosmology]
Let me try this again. Understanding laser interferometry does not require a PhD. Also, I am not skeptical about the science and engineering. The concepts don’t require that I sit and ponder them for days.
I am skeptical because so many scientists have already sold their souls for political and monetary gain. There is a good English word for that. It’s called corruption. I don’t doubt their instruments detected something. I’m willing to let the scientific method determine whether this so-called discovery is real. It’s a little early to break out the champagne and celebrate.
I briefly scanned the paper you referred us to Leif (thanx for that). I will have to print it out to be able to really digest it, but I do have some queries about the system.
First off is that the interferometer laser operating wavelength is about 1 micron. My understanding of the Michelson Interferometer, is that the interference fringes are basically sinusoidal (in amplitude) but also in Power with an offset. So with sinusoidal intensity fringes, it begs the question of how small a phase difference can one resolve.
A principle advantage of the Fabry Perot Interferometer, which is multibeam interference, is that the fringes can be very much sharper than for the Michelson, so perhaps offering finer resolution.
So it seems they are somehow resolving an extremely small phase shift in their interferometers.
Then it seems, that I picked up from one of the announcements (not in the actual paper perhaps) that the interferometer mirrors have something like 25 nm deviations from plane. Now I thought that laser optical flats could readily be made accurate to geometry to 1/100 wavelength which for the 1 micron YAG laser would be 10 nm.
So it seems to me that a 25 nm roughness for these super special optics, just doesn’t sound right. That 25 nm number I believe I read here (WUWT) with some description of having to “average”, whatever that means.
So I’m thinking that these mirrors are a darn side better than any 25 nm.
Having at one time wrung out most of the gremlins in a one cm quartz space Fabry-Perot Etalon, and got better than 1 ppm measurements on some Neon spectrum lines, I can appreciate the fantastic resolution that they must be getting out of their 4km Michelsons. Damned if I know how they are achieving that, but it sure is a heck of an achievement.
G
..Sorry Ernest, on this thread it’s seems that if you do not agree with lsvalgaardo exactly, right now, 100%, then you are considered an uneducated and worthless hillbilly !! ( see above ) I happen to agree with YOUR comment !
Well Ernest, you sound as though for you, reading about new scientific discoveries is an alternative to banging your head on a wall to quiet the buzz in your ears. It doesn’t sound like it is enjoyable for you.
I can say, that I viewed the hunt for the Higgs Boson with a jaundiced eye, because it seemed to me, that according to the theorists it was the end of the road anyway. And it was not clear to me that any practical use could come from having one. Other than perhaps completing a structure (of fundamental matter) . As it happens, very shortly after their announcement of success, I had the opportunity to enjoy multiple train rides with many of the CERN Physicists, because CERN is the starting point for the Meyrin train track, and the very next stop heading into Geneva, was right in front of the front door om My sister’s apartment, where she lived for 35 years (never telling that CERN was “just down the road”). I asked those fellow riders what comes next, and they just shrugged, and said ” We don’t know ” but they are going to build a bigger machine anyway.
But that seems to me to be an entirely different animal than this Gravitational Wave detection. First off, I do believe that this discovery will be confirmed in some form or another to the satisfaction of anyone with a reasonable background in Physics.
But what has been discovered, is a whole new communication channel and spectrum that goes from who knows where to who knows where else.
When I put this announcement, and the Hubble Deep Field photograph together, it boggles my mind as to what we suddenly have to look forward to finding out there; because this certainly isn’t the only gravitational even to happen in the last billion years. There is ” stuff ” going on all over the place out there, and we just got a new channel on our radio to listen to. I can see why scientists in Dr. S’s field are excited.
The universe is much weirder than we can even imagine, and we are going to find that out.
So I don’t mind if this machine gets upgraded from a PDP-8 to a 64 bit machine, so to speak; I really do think it is worth it.
If I get to retire, I think I’m going to enjoy reading about all the new stuff out there in the boondocks.
G
OK, so I read the entire paper that Dr. Svalgaard referred us to; even read the entire list of 1,000 authors. I didn’t stop in the middle to check the various papers referenced; but I think I will go back and look for some specific ones.
But I think I got a handle on one of my puzzle queries; the interference waveform of the Michelson Interferometer.
Now the Fabry-Perot Etalon I referred to that I played with in my youth is a plano-parallel cavity that creates multiple beams that combine and mutually interfere. If the plano plates are slightly off parallel (wedged) then a reflected beam after a round trip between the two mirrors, will arrive back at the start laterally shifted, and so will the next one, until the beam will walk right out of the aperture of the plates. The beam only continues to reflect back and forth indefinitely, if the two mirrors are mathematically exactly parallel.
Well it is very well known to laser folks (I’m a sort of one of those) that the plano plano cavity is an unstable resonator. Almost impossible to make a laser such as a gas laser with two exactly parallel plane mirrors.
So laser resonant cavities will tend to have at least one of the two mirrors curved (spherical). A very common small He-Ne laser cavity consists of one plane mirror, and one concave spherical mirror, with its center of curvature lying on the plane mirror. The spherical mirror is invariably 100% reflecting, as near as can be obtained, while the plane mirror is slithly transparent, so you can get an output from it. The plane mirror corresponds to where the plane Gaussian Beam waist is located, so it is the point where the laser beam has the smallest diameter. You can make a laser twice as long, with two identical concave mirrors.
Anyhow, laser book show the whole gamut of two mirror resonators and shows which are stable and which are unstable.
Now some semiconductor lasers that are made with cleaved end surface on the die are plano plano, but the non homogeneous doping of the material makes them not optically unstable, which is why they work at all.
So Back to LIGO. It is clear that they have designed their Michelson interferometer, so that each arm is in fact a stable optical resonator cavity, so they apparently do in fact achieve a multiple beam interference, which has the same sharp interference spikes that the Fabry -Perot has.
That is very clever to say the least.
They don’t say what those resonant cavity mirrors are other than they are massive Quartz slabs.
So the two mirrors also seem to form something akin to a gravitational wave dipole antenna.
So hopefully there will be plenty of papers describing this apparatus, and I’m sure they will be of great curiosity and interest to laser engineers. I’ll have to back and read my laser handbook, and see if there is information on the relative noisiness, of the various stable laser resonator configurations, because if there is such a spectrum, you can bet that these guys know all about it.
The whole paper is amazingly readable for such a complex undertaking. I did flash over some of the later sections, but I got a pretty good feeling for what they were doing, with just one reading. So people should read that paper, because it gives a good feel, for just how carefully they have crossed the eyes and dotted the tees.
I don’t have an at my fingertips understanding of what their waveform outputs are doing, but I think that is in the relativity aspects of the system, so I would have to bone up a bit, because I know as much about General Relativity and gravitation as I know about Quantum mechanics.
But I think I have a better feel for the optics of this gizmo.
G
“…because the MSM is touting this as the discovery of a century.”
Well, maybe in the astronomy of the 21st century, since we are only 15 years into it. If the 9th giant planet is sighted, that would be the greater, since it could be a staging (refuelling) stop on the way out of the solar system, while the gravitational wave being on the border of abstract, since it is so feeble and of no practical use. Hubble telescope is by far more important, by a number of magnitudes.
That argument could have been made about radio waves in the late 19th century.
My very first Physics (radio-physics) text book, I was reading while other kids my age were still learning their 12 times tables in grade school.
The title: ” The Admiralty Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy. ” All about spark transmitters, and coherer detectors (of Hertzian waves), even rotating machinery was used on Naval vessels to generate alternating currents to feed into whatever passed for an antenna in those days.
The book also contained some atomic physics, in order to understand how electricity worked in metals.
So naturally, the atomic properties of copper were of interest and discussed in detail. The copper atom was depicted according to the ” Plum Pudding ” model of atoms that was then in vogue.
The copper atom had a nucleus containing 63 protons and 36 electrons. That nucleus was surrounded by the plum pudding made of nobody knew what. Embedded in the pudding there were an additional 29 electrons, some of which could detach from the pudding and float about to form an electric current.
The Admiralty Handbook; at least the first volume of it, was first published in 1938. No I didn’t get a prepublication signed edition.
1938 was the year that Chadwick discovered the neutron, and put the kibosh on the plum pudding model of atomic structure.
The Bohr Sommerfeld atom of course came before that, and explained the Hydrogen atom spectrum, but physicists were still puzzled by the atomic number, atomic weight discrepancy.
This new observation and its technology isn’t much different except for scale from Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron.
It’s still too early to know what else lies under the rock these folks have just overturned; but I’m sure some of us will look back and think ; Remember when they first announced the detection of Einstein gravitational waves.
G
Fox News produced a several minutes long video about this announcement, which ran on many of their programs. So did other news organizations. That’s about the same amount of time devoted to the possible 9th large planet.
Marcus “Hey vukcevic, love your website !”
You must be another certifiable crackpot.
.. I’ve been certified numerous times, ask lsvalgaard !