Gravitational Waves

primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
edited February 2016 in Science & Tech

The piece from The New Yorker is the most poetic and beautiful description of today's major scientific breakthrough announcement that I've seen. Great read!

primesuspectSonorousLincdrasnorCliff_Forster

Comments

  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian

    That's so completely inaccurate. There would be SO MANY more LinkedIn emails.

  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian

    You too can learn signal processing and detect gravitational waves with the magic of Python:

    https://losc.ligo.org/s/events/GW150914/GW150914_tutorial.html

  • Okay, explain to me how sound traveled that far in a vacuum? I understand their is some precedence for some atmospheric medium like gas clouds and such but I thought in space no one could hear you scream?

    I want to believe, so badly, you have no idea. My imagination is running wild with it, but the idea that man can pinpoint a sound as being made 1.3 billion years ago, traveling from a place where sound typically doesn't travel, well, it's just hard for me to comprehend the discovery beyond accepting it just because their people that say so are smarter than me.... I very much would like to understand.

  • colacola part legend, part devil... all man Balls deep Icrontian

    @Cliff_Forster

    The waves produced by the merger of these black holes weren't sound waves, but rather "gravitational waves" which travel through the fabric of space-time similar to the way sound waves travel through air. Space-time is the fabric of reality as we perceive it which has three spacial axes and the perception of the forward motion of time. This event caused a ripple that was detected by scientists, proving part of Einstein's theorem.

    I hope that makes it easier to understand :)

    GargCliff_ForsterUPSLynx
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian

    @Cliff_Forster said:
    I very much would like to understand.

    Is thought the first video on this page was helpful. They showed that during the press conference. The rest of the event site is good, too.

    Cliff_Forster
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited February 2016

    So in essence this instrumentation is capable of detecting the disruptions in space time, in this case a massive vibration from two black holes getting too close and releasing a massive amount of energy, and the "sound" is putting those frequencies together and representing what it would sound like based on the vibration data?

  • colacola part legend, part devil... all man Balls deep Icrontian

    Exactly

  • UPSLynxUPSLynx :KAPPA: Redwood City, CA Icrontian

    This is a really, really good explanation of this whole thing in a way that helps dummies like me understand it. Super neat.

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