Gravitational Waves detected for the 2nd time

Science is on a roll lately! Didn't see this posted anywhere...

The warping of space-time was sensed on Christmas Day in the US at the Advanced LIGO laboratories - the same facilities that made the historic first detection in September last year.
Back then, the waves came from two huge coalescing black holes.
This new set of waves, likewise, is ascribed to a black hole merger - but a smaller one.

BBC link



This youtube video cleared up some questions I had... Can we notice the gravitational waves and the ripples felt on earth? No, they are incredibly tiny. I wonder if this has any changes in observing time? We know gravitational waves exist, we're only detecting them, but what do gravitational waves actually do?

a reply to: game over man

What is waving?

originally posted by: Alien Abduct
a reply to: game over man

What is waving?

Huh? Waving is with your hand...you don't say, "Oh look at those waves waving..." Waves are described as "traveling" usually, or in surfing "rolling". The gravitational waves are space and time. I just want to know more details about it and expand what little knowledge I have on the subject. Anybody is welcome to chime in.

a reply to: Alien Abduct

What is waving?

The lumiferious aether, of course ...

old but goody, despite the dumn newfangled
theories.

a reply to: game over man

But you would look at the water and say look it has waves, so with gravitational waves what is doing the waving?

originally posted by: Baddogma
a reply to: Alien Abduct

What is waving?

The lumiferious aether, of course ...

old but goody, despite the dumn newfangled
theories.

Excellent answer!

a reply to: Alien Abduct

But you would look at the water and say look it has waves, so with gravitational waves what is doing the waving?

Spacetime. The four dimensional matrix upon which reality rests and in which it resides.

That's what was measured, space (distance) changed as the wave transversed the detectors. Speaking of transversed, you cannot really compare ocean waves to gravitational waves (or electromagnetic waves). Entirely different sort of phenomenon. Ocean waves, the ones you seem to be talking about, occur at the interface of water and air. In space, there is no such interface yet the waves do propagate.

a reply to: game over man

Well, assuming that I have understood things correctly, a gravitational wave doesn't
DO any particular thing. If I throw a rock into a pond. The ripples that eminate from the impact do not have a purpose or a plan, they just come into existence and continue to bounce around the pond until the energy which created the movement has been dissipated.

I would imagine that, with a few major differences, this is the same thing. The differences being, that rather than water, we are talking about ripples in the fabric of space/time, and that these ripples were caused by two relatively massive objects becoming one singular object.

We already know that space/time can expand and contract, because planets have gravity wells around them, their mass causing a dimple in the fabric of space/time, with the effect that things are drawn toward them, at an intensity which is dictated by the mass of the object. In fact, all objects in the universe which possess mass, create their own little dimples. I have one, you have one. So space/time is elastic to a degree.

The difficulty is that gravity is not visible to the naked eye, only its effects are. That is why scientists constructed machinery capable of detecting gravitational disturbances, machinery which has recently collected great data on two incidents capable of causing noteworthy events on the skin of reality.

Over time, it is probable that this equipment will improve, methods will become more precise and data sets gleaned from the recordings made by the gear, will be richer and offer us an even more detailed perspective of events which cause dramatic movement in the fabric of our reality.

a reply to: Phage

Are "rouge" gravitational waves possible as a result of synchronization of multiple wave peaks?


Do gravitational waves experience dispersion?

What exactly is gravity?

a reply to: Alien Abduct

Are "rouge" gravitational waves possible as a result of synchronization of multiple wave peaks?

As I said, they are not analogous to ocean waves.

Do gravitational waves experience dispersion?

Do you mean do they follow the inverse square rule? Yes, I think they do.

What exactly is gravity?

A property of matter which manifests as a distortion of spacetime.

a reply to: Alien Abduct

Gravity = the effect of mass on the fabric of space and time.

a reply to: Alien Abduct
Gravity-as we comprehend is an electricity that developed from either pressure applied to Element 14 aka Silicon or silicon containing minerals, such as silicate perovskite or UV striking the same element 14 or again silicates.
Moon dust(there are no atmosphere, so UV light are pure photons unedited by ozone en.m.wikipedia.org...
Silicate perovskite is piezoelectric, thru the pressure en.m.wikipedia.org...
You have your gravity, without silicon-there are non-gravitational force en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: game over man

Excellent link to Brian Greene who is one of my favorite physicists as he explains physics in such a way that even the layman can understand some of the more complex theoretical aspects of it. If you do not have any of his books I strongly recommend them.

So what we observe and perceive are actually fact or what now..
One day science debates reality, or what we think it is or how can our explanations always be right or how we seem to figure out everything, next day we're detecting gravitational waves of smashing blackholes.

Is there anything we can't figure out over time.

I feel like he should have said 'mic dropped' at the end of the presentation. Very nice.

a reply to: Phage

How are the forces that hold atoms together different from gravity?

Is it possible that all the forces we see at work in nature (electro magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity) are really different sides of the same basic force?

Isn't any ground based measurements "contaminated" by outside sources that can affect the measurements? In this case, the earth moving (earth-quakes - even tiny ones might affect the alignment) or perhaps someone dropping a 1 ton object right above the emitter/reflector?

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: game over man

We already know that space/time can expand and contract, because planets have gravity wells around them, their mass causing a dimple in the fabric of space/time, with the effect that things are drawn toward them, at an intensity which is dictated by the mass of the object. In fact, all objects in the universe which possess mass, create their own little dimples. I have one, you have one. So space/time is elastic to a degree.


Over time, it is probable that this equipment will improve, methods will become more precise and data sets gleaned from the recordings made by the gear, will be richer and offer us an even more detailed perspective of events which cause dramatic movement in the fabric of our reality.

Yes exactly my point...as the Universe is expanding and accelerating, and having the planets in their position the expanding and accelerating Universe is what is rotating and orbiting the planets at a rate of how massive the planets are. All the other celestial bodies in a solar system have their own gravity, thus their own rotation and orbits.

Do gravity waves become stronger or weaker as they pass through the Universe? What happens to a gravity wave when it passes through a celestial body's gravity? Could it alter reality?

If we invent anti-gravity, could we invent anti gravitational waves?

a reply to: game over man

First of all, you have to understand that for all that it is a force which binds the elements and objects in the universe to one another, it is one of the weaker forces in the universe.

The passage of the gravitational wave as it passes through our own planet, shifts things by only a tiny, and I mean close to statistically irrelevant amount. There is no real nett effect, save for that which can be measured by machinery dedicated to its measurement.

As for whether it becomes stronger or weaker....that is a great question. Assuming that the laws of physics operate in a familiar fashion, whether we are discussing waves of gravitation, or waves of near enough anything else, I would assume that the waves become weaker the more space they travel through, simply because the more distance they travel, the more that the wave is changed, the more material it encounters, there by passing its own energy into objects that it passes through, although, being such a weak force, it may take some significant time (and space) to slow in its propagation. Something which has a barely noticeable impact when it passes through an object, would not pass on as much of its energy to that object, as something which solidly impacts that object.

So, for example, the sloshing around of all the water on this planet probably made more of a difference to the overall displacement of our planet on its axis, and the shape and scale of our gravity well, than the passage of those gravitational wave ever did!

a reply to: TrueBrit


Gravitational waves follow the inverse square law, like electromagnetic radiation does. I mentioned that previously

But by the inverse square law, the amplitude of the wave reduces as 1/r. (The energy density which is proportional to the square of the amplitude reduces as 1/r2.)

www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de...

And for people having trouble visualising the fabric of spacetime (or always thinking of it like the flat surface of a trampoline), here's a nice 3D visualisation:

www.youtube.com...

Remember the old trampoline analogy taught in every school? It doesn't come even close to what it should be representing. This video is a collection of pictures I searched the Internet for, which show how spacetime is really bent by all objects.