Big day in science today - gravitational waves are discovered

[vacuum]

Einstein's gravitational waves found at last

LIGO 'hears' space-time ripples produced by black-hole collision.



Davide Castelvecchi (http://www.nature.com/news/einstein-s-gravitational-waves-found-at-last-1.19361?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews#auth-1)
& Alexandra Witze (http://www.nature.com/news/einstein-s-gravitational-waves-found-at-last-1.19361?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews#auth-2)

11 February 2016


http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.34042.1455213083%21/image/IMG_2774.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/IMG_2774.jpg Chris Maddaloni/Nature
Gabriela Gonzalez, Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne (L-R) applaud as LIGO executive director David Reitze announces the detection of gravitational waves.


One hundred years after Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, scientists have finally spotted these elusive ripples in space-time.
In a highly anticipated announcement, physicists with the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) revealed on 11 February that their twin detectors have heard the gravitational 'ringing' produced by the collision of two black holes about 400 megaparsecs (1.3 billion light-years) from Earth1 (http://www.nature.com/news/einstein-s-gravitational-waves-found-at-last-1.19361?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews#b1).
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves,” David Reitze, the executive director of the LIGO Laboratory, said at a Washington DC press conference (http://www.nature.com/news/ligo-announces-gravitational-wave-detection-in-pictures-1.19368). “We did it!”
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.34003.1455124556%21/image/WEB_Screen-Shot-2016-02-10-at-10.06.51.jpg_gen/derivatives/fullsize/WEB_Screen-Shot-2016-02-10-at-10.06.51.jpg Gravitational waves: 6 cosmic questions they can tackle (http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-6-cosmic-questions-they-can-tackle-1.19337)



One black hole was about 36 times the mass of the Sun, and the other was about 29 solar masses. As they spiralled inexorably into one another, they merged into a single, more-massive gravitational sink in space-time that weighed 62 solar masses, the LIGO team estimates.
“These amazing observations are the confirmation of a lot of theoretical work, including Einstein's general theory of relativity (http://www.nature.com/news/general-relativity-100-1.18795), which predicts gravitational waves,” says physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, UK. Hawking noted that Einstein himself never believed in black holes.
This is the first black-hole merger that scientists have observed. The violent event temporarily radiated more energy — in the form of gravitational waves — than all the stars in the observable Universe emitted as light in the same amount of time.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.34035.1455206326%21/image/LIGO-online.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_400/LIGO-online.jpg (http://www.nature.com/news/ligo-old-final-png-7.34035?article=1.19361) Nik Spencer/Nature
Expand


When played as an audible sound, the waves make an unmistakeable ‘chirp’ (http://www.ligo.org/science/GW-Inspiral.php) — a rapidly rising tone — followed by a ‘ringdown’, the radiation pattern from the merged black hole. The 'loudness' of the recorded signal also provides a rough measure of when the merger occurred: between 600 million and 1.8 billion years ago.
The work will be published in a series of papers in Physical Review Letters1 (http://www.nature.com/news/einstein-s-gravitational-waves-found-at-last-1.19361?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews#b1) and the Astrophysical Journal.
The historic discovery — which physicists say will probably lead shortly to a Nobel prize — opens up the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy (http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature.2016.19337), in which scientists will listen to the waves to learn more about the objects that can produce them, including black holes, neutron stars and supernovae.
“This is just the first step in a much larger and more exciting development,” says Ilya Mandel, a theoretical physicist at the University of Birmingham, UK. Gravitational waves will join γ-rays, X-rays and radio waves as "part of the toolkit that we have for understanding the universe", he says.
It is also a long-sought victory for the LIGO experiment, which had spent a decade searching for the signal (http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/511278a) in the 2000s before a US$200-million upgrade improved the sensitivity of its twin detectors (http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/525301a), one in Livingston, Louisiana, and the other in Hanford, Washington.
Wave of discovery

The discovery itself was made before the upgraded version, Advanced LIGO, had officially begun to take scientific data. At 11:50 a.m. Central European Time on 14 September, during the experiment's first observing run, LIGO physicist Marco Drago at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany, saw a strange signal on his computer.
Software that analyses data in real time was indicating that both interferometers had seen a wave resembling the chirp of a bird with a rapidly increasing pitch. Within an hour, the news had reached Drago's boss, physicist Bruce Allen. The recording looked too good to be true. “When I first saw it I said, 'Oh, it's an injection, obviously,'” Allen says.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.34029.1455209954%21/image/GW%20Data%203-panel.jpeg_gen/derivatives/landscape_400/GW%20Data%203-panel.jpeg (http://www.nature.com/news/gw-data-3-panel-jpeg-7.34029?article=1.19361) LIGO
The gravitational wave signals detected by the twin LIGO stations.
Expand


It was an oscillation that began at 35 cycles per second (hertz) and rapidly increased to 250 hertz. It then became chaotic and rapidly died down; the whole thing was over within one-fourth of a second. Crucially, both detectors saw it at roughly the same time — Livingston first and Hanford 7 milliseconds later. That delay is an indication of how the waves swept through the Earth.
Other gravitational-wave detectors — the Virgo interferometer near Pisa, Italy, and the GEO600 interferometer near Hannover — were not operating at the time and so could not confirm the signal. Had Advanced Virgo been on, it would have probably detected the event as well, says its spokesperson, Fulvio Ricci, a physicist at the University of Rome La Sapienza. LIGO scientists have run a series of careful checks to ensure that the signal is real and means what they think it does.
In the past, a few senior members of the LIGO team have tested the group's ability to validate a potential discovery by secretly inserting ‘blind injections’ of fake gravitational waves into the data stream to test whether the research team can differentiate between real and fake signals. But the September detection happened before blind injections were being made, so it is thought to be a signal from a real astrophysical phenomenon in the Universe.
To pinpoint the source of gravitational waves, researchers have to triangulate a signal spotted by different machines spread around Earth. When both LIGO detectors are operating along with Virgo or GEO600, scientists expect to be better able to locate future gravitational-wave sources. Another interferometer in Japan is under development, and a third LIGO site in India has been proposed. A greater geographic spread of detectors would strengthen confidence in any signals.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.34002.1455124440%21/image/2643217201.jpg_gen/derivatives/fullsize/2643217201.jpg Nature Special: Gravitational Waves (http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-1.19321)


Direct detection

Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that any cosmic event that disturbs the fabric of space-time with sufficient force should produce gravitational ripples that propagate through the Universe. Earth should be awash with such waves — but by the time they reach us, the disturbances that they produce are minute.
In 1974, physicists Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse at the University of Massachusetts Amherst indirectly confirmed the existence of gravitational waves by watching radio flashes emitted by a pair of neutron stars whirling around one another; the shifts in the flashes’ timing matched Einstein’s predictions of how gravitational waves would carry energy away from the event. That discovery won them the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics (see: ‘The hundred-year quest for gravitational waves — in pictures (http://www.nature.com/news/the-hundred-year-quest-for-gravitational-waves-in-pictures-1.19340)’).
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.34034.1455207941%21/image/LIGO_Volume_FINAL.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_400/LIGO_Volume_FINAL.jpg (http://www.nature.com/news/ligo-volume-final-jpg-7.34034?article=1.19361) Adapted from Andrew Z. Colvin/CC-BY-SA 3.0
Expand


But direct detection of the waves had to await the sensitivity achieved by Advanced LIGO, which can detect stretches and compressions of space-time that are as small as one part in 1022 — comparable to a hair’s-width change in the distance from the Sun to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the Solar System.

LIGO’s twin interferometers bounce laser beams between mirrors at the opposite ends of 4-kilometre-long vacuum pipes that are set perpendicularly to each other. A gravitational wave passing through will alter the length of one of the arms, causing the laser beams to shift slightly out of sync.
Paid for by the US National Science Foundation, the machines were designed and built by teams at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Caltech’s Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever, along with MIT’s Rainer Weiss, were the original founders.
More than 1,000 scientists now belong to the LIGO collaboration. By studying gravitational waves, this next generation of researchers expects to probe entirely new realms of physics, including strong-field gravity, the very early Universe and how matter behaves at extremely high densities.
Hawking says that he would like to use gravitational waves to test his area theorem: that “the area of the final black hole is greater than the sum of the areas of the internal black holes.” He adds: “This is satisfied by the observations.”
“It’s the very real dawn of a new era,” says Mansi Kasliwal, an astronomer at Caltech.

Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19361


http://www.nature.com/news/einstein-s-gravitational-waves-found-at-last-1.19361?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews

[vacuum]

Short video explanation:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s06_jRK939I

[Neuro]

No this wasn't caused by two fictional black holes colliding 1.3 Billion light years away. I believe the compression of the tunnel was caused by a teenager closing her door really hard in anger a fraction of a lightsecond away...

If they had had the other 'gravitational wave' detectors on they could have disapproved my theory...

These psychopaths (or is it physicopaths) are just telling stories children. They have to tell an interesting one once in a while, otherwise their funding is cut...

[vacuum]

No this wasn't caused by two fictional black holes colliding 1.3 Billion light years away. I believe the compression of the tunnel was caused by a teenager closing her door really hard in anger a fraction of a lightsecond away...

If they had had the other 'gravitational wave' detectors on they could have disapproved my theory...

These psychopaths (or is it physicopaths) are just telling stories children. They have to tell an interesting one once in a while, otherwise their funding is cut...

I thought it might might have been a live-streamed Donald Trump rally myself, but didn't want to speculate.

[Glass]

you just have to list the names to know it's another Pied Piper BS exercise.

Scammers gotta keep scamming. What was the measurement that enabled them to detect these?

ok so it was a collision of black holes? Which they discovered the location of, how?

What the flip is a final black hole? anyway completely new ways of bilking the public became viable today.

And einstien didn't beleive in black holes but we need them to confirm his theory, which didn't need them apparently.

How long ago did this collision happen?

They heard ringing?

ok so I should read the article.

And the physicist are expecting a nobel prize as well. So we now know it's 100% credible.


In the past, a few senior members of the LIGO team have tested the group's ability to validate a potential discovery by secretly inserting ‘blind injections’ of fake gravitational waves into the data stream to test whether the research team can differentiate between real and fake signals. But the September detection happened before blind injections were being made, so it is thought to be a signal from a real astrophysical phenomenon in the Universe.

Sounds a lot like the running of moon mission. Simulate the telemetry. Who would be any the wiser?


But direct detection of the waves had to await the sensitivity achieved by Advanced LIGO, which can detect stretches and compressions of space-time that are as small as one part in 1022 — comparable to a hair’s-width change in the distance from the Sun to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the Solar System.

Also the original work from 1993 is based on assumption as to the source of the wave. unproven.

[Neuro]

Apparently they discovered this on 14th of September, which is an interesting date, because it is one day BEFORE the LIGO started measuring gravitational waves... It seems time-space distortions are way bigger than previously thought...

[JohnQPublic]

Confirming Einstein's Theory (https://around.uoregon.edu/longform/uo-team-helps-catch-gravity-wave)


— By Jim Barlow, University Communications




Had UO scientist Robert Schofield kept working at 4 a.m. last Sept. 14, physicists might not yet be hailing the detection of a gravitational wave triggered in the last second of two colliding black holes a billion light years away. Schofield was at LIGO’s site in Livingston, Louisiana, working with Anamaria Effler, a scientist based there. They’d put in a long day injecting noises from Earth-bound environmental sources to analyze their effects on the sensitive detectors. Rather than shut down the detectors to begin another test, Schofield and Effler chose to leave them operating and get some sleep.

“The signal came in about 45 minutes after Anamaria and I left,” Schofield said. “If I had been in the control room, I wouldn’t have seen it. It lasted one-tenth of a second. Had I been in the control room an alarm would have sounded, and I could have seen it by looking back at the data. But I was at my motel.”

...At about the same time of the gravitational wave's arrival, Schofield said, a massive lightning burst occurred over Burkina Faso in Africa. Some LIGO collaborators worried that a resulting electromagnetic wave, rather than a gravitational wave from deep space, had been recorded.

[JohnQPublic]

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them

The LIGO team includes a small group of people whose job is to create blind injections—bogus evidence of a gravitational wave—as a way of keeping the scientists on their toes. Although everyone knew who the four people in that group were, “we didn’t know what, when, or whether,” Gabriela González, the collaboration’s spokeswoman, said. During Initial LIGO’s final run, in 2010, the detectors picked up what appeared to be a strong signal. The scientists analyzed it intensively for six months, concluding that it was a gravitational wave from somewhere in the constellation of Canis Major. Just before they submitted their results for publication, however, they learned that the signal was a fake.


This time through, the blind-injection group swore that they had nothing to do with the signal. Marco Drago thought that their denials might also be part of the test, but Reitze, himself a member of the quartet, had a different concern. “My worry was—and you can file this under the fact that we are just paranoid cautious about making a false claim—could somebody have done this maliciously?” he said. “Could somebody have somehow faked a signal in our detector that we didn’t know about?” Reitze, Weiss, González, and a handful of others considered who, if anyone, was familiar enough with both the apparatus and the algorithms to have spoofed the system and covered his or her tracks. There were only four candidates, and none of them had a plausible motive. “We grilled those guys,” Weiss said. “And no, they didn’t do it.” Ultimately, he said, “We accepted that the most economical explanation was that it really is a black-hole pair.”

[Glass]

yes I also picked up on that JQP. I posted about how this was just like the Luna projects where they would "inject" flight telemetry into the training sequences.

How would any one in ground control know the difference? The whole point is to convince the team that its real. This is not a Drill!. So the whole moon program was probably just a telemetry program playing out.

I think they have provided a large number of clues in the story for the people who know the Space BS know it for what it is. A highly incredible story.

[JohnQPublic]

yes I also picked up on that JQP. I posted about how this was just like the Luna projects where they would "inject" flight telemetry into the training sequences.

How would any one in control know the difference? The whole point is to convince the team that its real. This is not a Drill!. So the whole moon program was probably just a telemetry program playing out.

I think they have provided a large number of clues in the story for the people who know the Space BS know it for what it is. A highly incredible story.

Sounds a bit like:

1. Dick Cheney playing "war games" the day of 9-11;
2. The consultant in the London underground doing a terror attack simulation during an underground "terror attack";
3. The emergency evacuation team for Netown CT just happening to be at a staged school terror drill at the same time as the Sandy Hook "shootings"'

etc., etc.

[Neuro]

Lucky enough to pick up on 2 black holes uniting the last fraction of the second, the day prior to the official start of the measuring. It seems like an incredibly rare event (assuming black holes are real, which they probably aren't). I would be interested if this cosmic "collision" was recorded otherwise and how? The predictions of the masses of these black holes and distance from earth are very precise...

[JohnQPublic]

Lucky enough to pick up on 2 black holes uniting the last fraction of the second, the day prior to the official start of the measuring. It seems like an incredibly rare event (assuming black holes are real, which they probably aren't). I would be interested if this cosmic "collision" was recorded otherwise and how? The predictions of the masses of these black holes and distance from om earth are very precise...

It is compared to a numerical solution of a general relativity simulation of two black holes spiraling together. The parameters are tweaked (optimized) to make fit the signal, and thus predict the masses, etc. of the black holes. This still begs the question whether black holes even exist.

[Neuro]

It is compared to a numerical solution of a general relativity simulation of two black holes spiraling together. The parameters are tweaked (optimized) to make fit the signal, and thus predict the masses, etc. of the black holes. This still begs the question whether black holes even exist.
Yes, they make a prediction of an event to fit the signal. Then they turn it around and state that the event is real and that it created this "gravitational wave" that was detected by their giant radio tube. This is bullshit circular reasoning. The fact is they got a signal, and they have no idea what created it, unless they created it themselves, an explanation I'm leaning towards...

[Glass]

I'd like to know if they have to take into account any curvature of the earth with their L detector thingo.

It's a highly stable and precise device that suffers no variations from any source? Of course they would filter out any obvious sources of interference with the beams stability. Not sure how they do it.

I saw somewhere that the earths resistance was 220 Ohms. Was watching one of those presentations on electric universe and the Auroras, the existence of them at the poles of saturn and neptune? The hexagonal storm on the top of one of them or maybe more than one. Even NASA filmed that one.

Anyway I was looking into resitance. Seems they just make crap up to fit. Standardised measurement - for the purposes of mathematics/design. That is basically what it boiled down to. Not an actual real situation but a standard.

I was wondering if the 220 Ohms was a close approximation and the real number might be 222 Ohms. Graphene is also interesting. I wonder how it would perform on those sound/vibration experiments compared to other materials like sand.

[Neuro]

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them

The LIGO team includes a small group of people whose job is to create blind injections—bogus evidence of a gravitational wave—as a way of keeping the scientists on their toes. Although everyone knew who the four people in that group were, “we didn’t know what, when, or whether,” Gabriela González, the collaboration’s spokeswoman, said. During Initial LIGO’s final run, in 2010, the detectors picked up what appeared to be a strong signal. The scientists analyzed it intensively for six months, concluding that it was a gravitational wave from somewhere in the constellation of Canis Major. Just before they submitted their results for publication, however, they learned that the signal was a fake.


This time through, the blind-injection group swore that they had nothing to do with the signal. Marco Drago thought that their denials might also be part of the test, but Reitze, himself a member of the quartet, had a different concern. “My worry was—and you can file this under the fact that we are just paranoid cautious about making a false claim—could somebody have done this maliciously?” he said. “Could somebody have somehow faked a signal in our detector that we didn’t know about?” Reitze, Weiss, González, and a handful of others considered who, if anyone, was familiar enough with both the apparatus and the algorithms to have spoofed the system and covered his or her tracks. There were only four candidates, and none of them had a plausible motive. “We grilled those guys,” Weiss said. “And no, they didn’t do it.” Ultimately, he said, “We accepted that the most economical explanation was that it really is a black-hole pair.”
Sounds like a small team that have practiced making fake signals for ages, and they were caught doing this before. Now we are supposed to believe their insurances that they didn't do it...

I'll say waterboard them, that should be more effective than "grilling" them. I don't think any of these Jew conspirators would hold up very long... ;D

[aeondaze]

We'll all just have to wait and see what comes of this, might end up being a false positive or even just a dead end, either way its all just a bit of fun at this stage, but it sure as heck is funny watching a bunch of "arm chair astronomers" getting all indignant and asserting they know more than the experts, lol

:rolleyes:

[JohnQPublic]

We'll all just have to wait and see what comes of this, might end up being a false positive or even just a dead end, either way its all just a bit of fun at this stage, but it sure as heck is funny watching a bunch of "arm chair astronomers" getting all indignant and asserting they know more than the experts, lol

:rolleyes:

May be another case of popping the cork too early. (If you recall, this was about the Bicep2 gravitational wave in 2014 that was proved false)


https://youtu.be/ZlfIVEy_YOA

[Neuro]

We'll all just have to wait and see what comes of this, might end up being a false positive or even just a dead end, either way its all just a bit of fun at this stage, but it sure as heck is funny watching a bunch of "arm chair astronomers" getting all indignant and asserting they know more than the experts, lol

:rolleyes:
You don't see a problem in interpreting a signal as two black holes colliding and then from that interpret it as evidence of a gravitational wave, because these are experts? :)

[vacuum]

You don't see a problem in interpreting a signal as two black holes colliding and then from that interpret it as evidence of a gravitational wave, because these are experts? :)

I don't think their paper has been published yet. This is all science journalism at this point (albeit from reputable sources like Nature). Maybe in their paper the whole black hole thing is a "what if" scenario, and they focus mostly on the signal itself and eliminating source of error such that the signal could only be explained by gravity. We don't know quite yet. Once the paper is published, other scientists will be eager to tear it apart.

[JohnQPublic]

I don't think their paper has been published yet. This is all science journalism at this point (albeit from reputable sources like Nature). Maybe in their paper the whole black hole thing is a "what if" scenario, and they focus mostly on the signal itself and eliminating source of error such that the signal could only be explained by gravity. We don't know quite yet. Once the paper is published, other scientists will be eager to tear it apart.

Here is the paper: https://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-disseminate/1721.1/101166

[Neuro]

Here is the paper: https://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-disseminate/1721.1/101166
The conclusion:
"This is the first directdetection of gravitational waves and the first observation ofa binary black hole merger."

Both of these assumptions are based on the assumption of each others existence, and on theoretical assumptions on their properties. From a scientific point of view it is incredibly weak evidence. It is like measuring vibrations in Loch Ness and assume a particular vibration could only be from Nessie burping. Thereby proving that Nessie exists and burps, and that the vibration measuring device is a valid method to measure it, without ascertaining with any complementary method, photographic evidence for instance...

[Glass]

I'm sensing some doubt in this thread.

[vacuum]

The conclusion:
"This is the first directdetection of gravitational waves and the first observation ofa binary black hole merger."

Both of these assumptions are based on the assumption of each others existence, and on theoretical assumptions on their properties. From a scientific point of view it is incredibly weak evidence. It is like measuring vibrations in Loch Ness and assume a particular vibration could only be from Nessie burping. Thereby proving that Nessie exists and burps, and that the vibration measuring device is a valid method to measure it, without ascertaining with any complementary method, photographic evidence for instance...

There are two LIGO sites, one in Washington and one in Louisiana. It takes light 10 ms to travel between the two sites.

The entire basis for their claim of detecting gravitational waves is if they see the same signal at both sites occur less than 10 ms apart. A volcanic eruption in Washington, for example, would not show up at the Louisiana site until long after 10 ms had elapsed.

A lightning strike in Colorado however, could potentially show up at both sites within 10 ms. To defeat that, they constantly filter through the data looking for "signatures" of what they would predict two orbiting massive bodies would look like. Which is what happened here, both sites detected the waveform they would expect to see if two black holes were spiraling into each other.

I agree it's somewhat indirect and a little weak, but it's definitely something interesting that happened. But I agree that until they routinely see these signatures from similar sites all over the world and get a lot more data, it is hard to claim they really know for sure what they saw.

[Neuro]

There are two LIGO sites, one in Washington and one in Louisiana. It takes light 10 ms to travel between the two sites.

The entire basis for their claim of detecting gravitational waves is if they see the same signal at both sites occur less than 10 ms apart. A volcanic eruption in Washington, for example, would not show up at the Louisiana site until long after 10 ms had elapsed.

A lightning strike in Colorado however, could potentially show up at both sites within 10 ms. To defeat that, they constantly filter through the data looking for "signatures" of what they would predict two orbiting massive bodies would look like. Which is what happened here, both sites detected the waveform they would expect to see if two black holes were spiraling into each other.

I agree it's somewhat indirect and a little weak, but it's definitely something interesting that happened. But I agree that until they routinely see these signatures from similar sites all over the world and get a lot more data, it is hard to claim they really know for sure what they saw.
Maybe earth had an expansion contraction vibration? They have a theoretical model re how a melting of two black holes would look like, but so far geologists can't predict when an earthquake of magnitude will strike, and these patterns of the melting together of two black holes follow the theoretical model perfectly...

You really can't validate a method for measuring gravitational waves at the same time as you validate a theory of how supposed black holes come together. You can't validate two unknowns at the same time...

Wouldn't the moon circling the earth create a slow gravitational wave, that these machines should be able to measure?

[Santa]

We'll all just have to wait and see what comes of this, might end up being a false positive or even just a dead end, either way its all just a bit of fun at this stage, but it sure as heck is funny watching a bunch of "arm chair astronomers" getting all indignant and asserting they know more than the experts, lol

:rolleyes:

No one is saying they know more than "the experts"... What they're saying is, based on historical precedent that "the experts" are too often happy to lie their fucking asses off for the sake of government grants and corporate funding.

[Joshua01]

No one is saying they know more than "the experts"... What they're saying is, based on historical precedent that "the experts" are too often happy to lie their fucking asses off for the sake of government grants and corporate funding.

Well there you go...someone here is actually paying attention!!! Between this thread and the one about the Moon being a hologram I'm really beginning to wonder about the collective intelligence of the human race...and I'm not even considering the flat earthers

[EE_]

No one is saying they know more than "the experts"... What they're saying is, based on historical precedent that "the experts" are too often happy to lie their fucking asses off for the sake of government grants and corporate funding.

Agreed, the only reason scientists keep finding things light years away in the universe is to keep their funding coming in and their pay checks still being cashed.
None of this means a hill of beans to us peon's here on earth. If they don't find things, they'll make them up. Meanwhile, our country and our infrastructure is crumbling.

[JohnQPublic]

There are two LIGO sites, one in Washington and one in Louisiana. It takes light 10 ms to travel between the two sites.

The entire basis for their claim of detecting gravitational waves is if they see the same signal at both sites occur less than 10 ms apart. A volcanic eruption in Washington, for example, would not show up at the Louisiana site until long after 10 ms had elapsed.

A lightning strike in Colorado however, could potentially show up at both sites within 10 ms. To defeat that, they constantly filter through the data looking for "signatures" of what they would predict two orbiting massive bodies would look like. Which is what happened here, both sites detected the waveform they would expect to see if two black holes were spiraling into each other.

I agree it's somewhat indirect and a little weak, but it's definitely something interesting that happened. But I agree that until they routinely see these signatures from similar sites all over the world and get a lot more data, it is hard to claim they really know for sure what they saw.

I agree they probably measured something, and possibly of interest, unless someone took advantage of the instrument sitting unattended and operating and injected a false code. The fact is it is a sophisticated instrument. Each interferometer have all kinds of sensors to monitor for seismic activity, magnetic shifts, etc., so if something physical happened at one site, they would know. The fact it was detected at both sites does give it some credibility.

This is basically a sophisticated modern Michelson-Morley (http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?62820-Geocentrism&p=564782&highlight=Michelson+Morley#post564782) type interferometer, except it is under high vacuum, and not pointed due N-W, plus uses lasers and a lot longer light path.

[cheka.]

affirmative action hire was watching screen when blip happened

pure genius, move over peanut butter guy

http://theadvocate.com/news/14908976-176/southern-grad-at-helm-in-wee-hours-of-the-morning-when-ligo-made-gravitational-waves-discovery

William Parker was nearly seven hours into a routine shift in the Livingston control room when he thought he saw a flash on a screen.

Parker, a 41-year-old Southern University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and master’s in physics, was hired in 2014 as an operator with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory.

As Parker was completing his master’s degree in late 2014, he heard about the operator position in Livingston. It was an opportunity he could not pass up.

“When I got the email about the opening, I was like, ‘Duh! Of course I want this,’ ” he recalled. “I guess you could say that’s when I went from watching SciFi to doing SciFi.”

Parker’s job is to monitor LIGO’s highly sensitive instruments for any changes that might indicate a distortion in the laser beams running down two perpendicular, 2.5-mile tubes.

That distortion, if there was one, might be one of the ripples in space-time that Albert Einstein predicted in 1916 and that LIGO scientists had been seeking for decades. It might be the world’s first detection of gravitational waves.

Parker said he never dreamed that he would be among the team of scientists who first recorded gravitational waves. The New Orleans native had always been interested in science, but struggled academically when he first attempted to get a higher education at Delgado Community College.

“I wasn’t quite prepared for the next level at that point, and I didn’t fare too well,” Parker said. “But as I matured, I tried again and started at Southern University in New Orleans under the direction of Dr. Joe Omojola. He gave me a second chance to get in school.”

That second chance came through the Louis Stokes Louisiana Alliance for Minority Participation, a statewide program funded through the National Science Foundation and designed to increase minority studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Parker participated in the program at SUNO and, after Hurricane Katrina, at Southern University in Baton Rouge.

Southern has been an active member in LIGO in the area of optical materials since 1999, according to a news release following last week’s announcement of the gravitational waves detection. The university’s work focuses on minimizing noise in LIGO test mass mirrors in order to help maximize the sensitivity of the LIGO interferometers, the instruments that detect the waves.

Southern’s work with LIGO, and in particular its participation in the LIGO Science Education Center, first connected Parker to the LIGO project. He served as a docent, or guide, at the center for several years beginning in 2007.

“I was already interested in science, ever since I was a kid,” Parker said, noting that Neil deGrasse Tyson had been a favorite of his because of the way the astrophysicist made scientific study easy to understand. “Becoming a docent gave me an interest in education too.”

[Neuro]

Parker, a 41-year-old Southern University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and master’s in physics, was hired in 2014 as an operator with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory.

As Parker was completing his master’s degree in late 2014, he heard about the operator position in Livingston. It was an opportunity he could not pass up.

“When I got the email about the opening, I was like, ‘Duh! Of course I want this,’ ” he recalled. “I guess you could say that’s when I went from watching SciFi to doing SciFi.”
Hahahah... Let's do Science and Sheeit!

Nigger watched black hoes merging and detected a ripple in space-time continuum... ;D

[Neuro]

Deyz got da Noble price...

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/

[StreetsOfGold]

Einstein's gravitational waves found at last

LOL

The latest in their STORY TELLING, science fiction FABLE NONSENSE!!
Thanks for another LAUGH!!

1 Timothy 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: