Comments on: A More Perfect Union

By: Robert Crowley

Robert Crowley — Sat, 02 Jul 2016 17:47:45 +0000

I’m lucky enough to live within about 40 minutes of the Livingston, La LIGO facility, and I remember the discussions around the area when it was announced and being built. (Well, for those who had any understanding of what it actually is, anyhow. There were also plenty who had no concept of the science behind it or the implications of what it could discover and many just thought it was a huge waste of time and money.) The announcement of the first successful detection after the last upgrade was thrilling news. But one thing I have always wondered is, besides proving yet another facet of Einstein’s most famous work and apparently confirming the ‘fabric’-like nature of spacetime, what is the information from these waves actually telling us that we don’t already have a reasonable theory of?
As you stated, the second detection was of a ‘textbook’ merger, which means we already have an obviously competent idea of the physics involved. So other than confirming that the propagation of gravity is also bound by C, what new information do these wave detections present?
Please understand, I am not in any way trying to diminish the importance of the discoveries or the science behind the detectors. I just honestly would like to know what new information we have gleaned from them, other than coming closer to confirming that Einstein was correct about Relativity in pretty much every implication. (Though I still think that seeing a pattern in the Planck CMB data that resembles the letters ‘S H’ tells us all we need to know about physics in the macro scale. The Good Professor signed his work…)

By: Wayne Roberts

Wayne Roberts — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 23:38:15 +0000

The distortions of space which we now measure and which are the result of gravitational waves are miniscule. Is this just because of the vast distance of the events which generated the waves? What would be the amplitude of distortions measured up close and caused by, for example, the merger of two 10 s.m. black holes?

By: Wayne

Wayne — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 03:58:23 +0000

Very exciting stuff!

Brian, I’ve been reading where this second result might bolster the idea of “primordial black holes” and possibly shed light on the dark matter puzzle. I don’t know if this is worth addressing in another of your excellent posts, but personally I found the connection interesting.

I also found it very encouraging that the second result from LIGO followed so quickly after the first – I imagine this has lots of people excited! Looks like they are going to take it offline to upgrade to 1.5 – 2x sensitivity (wow) and by then the Italy facility will also be online, allowing for triangulation of locating the events in the night sky. Amazing.

By: Jean Tate

Jean Tate — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 21:09:27 +0000

This is great news!

A single detection is surely interesting, but not really enough to do any decent astronomy. Two new, which strongly suggests many more are likely this year. And when Advanced Virgo comes online, greatly shrinking the location (on the sky) of the events, even more astronomy awaits!

By: Brian Koberlein

Brian Koberlein — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 17:00:03 +0000

Yeah, knowing the masses you can compare the gravitational wave luminosity to determine the distance. Direction is a bit more difficult.

By: jpatrick

jpatrick — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 12:47:42 +0000

If I understand it right, there is mass and distance information about these binary black hole mergers, but not much accuracy about direction.