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'First Lock' At Laser Interferometer

Posted by michael on from the hole-in-the-middle-of-it-all dept.

alanb0 writes: "The LIGO project, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to look for gravity waves and confirm general relativity, announced 'first lock' on Friday, which is analogous to 'first light' for a new telescope. Here's a story about it ..."

3 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. sensitivity by jimmy_whacked · · Score: 4

    i listened to a lecture by an applied mathematician modelling gravity waves and he mentioned that the instrument was so sensitive that the scientists were forced to compensate for the movements of the ocean over 300 miles away. it is mindboggling to think that this detector could be thrown off by anything that remote, but that helps to illistrate the challenges the researchers face.

  2. Re:This is good, but... by KjetilK · · Score: 4
    Patience, my friend, patience.... :-) It's really, really hard. First, spherically symmetric objects don't send out gravity waves, so the moon, the sun, most stars, etc, will emit very little. However, there are lots of things that will, some things are very far out in the Universe. In my personal opinion, it's not so much a matter about testing GR, I think that it is very certain that gravity waves exist, I think it is a matter of learning how to use them.

    So, first, you would have to detect them, then, perhaps you connect them to events, e.g. Gamma Ray Bursts, then you may be able to tell if it comes from the one direction or the other, and finally, some time in the future (when we're talking LISA), we might talk about angular resolution.

    And what that means? It opens a whole new view of the Universe. We're going to see where the matter is, directly. It's just fantastic, I'm telling you....

    For an idea of how sensitive these instruments are, I attended a lecture given by a couple of students at a German project, and they once had a signal. Well, not really, it turned out that it couldn't be gravity waves, and they search for a long time to figure out what it could be. Finally, it turned out that a local farmer had bought a heavier tractor, and that shook the ground more than they had thought....

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    Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
  3. LEGOs by GigsVT · · Score: 4

    Its amazing what they can build with Lego's these days.
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    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.