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MiniGRAIL Online
An anonymous reader writes "MiniGRAIL - the first spherical resonant mass gravitational wave detector in the world - is now taking data!!! The MiniGRAIL (Gravitational Radiation Antenna In Leiden) detector is located at the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory of the Leiden University (The Netherlands). The MiniGRAIL detector is a cryogenic 68 cm diameter spherical gravitational wave antenna made of CuAl(6%) alloy with a mass of 1400 Kg, a resonance frequency of 2.9 kHz and a bandwidth around 230 Hz, possibly higher. The quantum-limited strain sensitivity dL/L would be ~4x10-21. The antenna will operate at a temperature of 20 mK. An other similar detector is being built in São Paulo, which will strongly increase the chances of detection by looking at coincidences. The sources we are aiming at are for instance, non-axisymmetric instabilities in rotating single and binary neutron stars, small black-hole or neutron-star mergers etc."
Okay folks, since MiniGRAIL is now taking data in the Netherlands and its partner is doing that in São Paulo, a cautionary.
Please, those of you located equidistant from the two, don't jump, stomp your feet, or drop heavy books. They rely on asymmetry to weed out false signals, and you folks straddling the middle could throw it off.
Remember, we must all do our bit for science.
A.
Dammit.. they don't have this translation option yet.
We've already got one; it is a-very nice!
They are looking for gravitational waves. The kind
that are predicted to exist by various versions of
relativity.
This is why they are looking for things like black
hole mergers - because those are supposed to give
off major gravity ripples that could hopefully be
seen by our puny labs on Earth.
I am curious how their theoretical resolution
measures up to the bigger projects like LIGO. I am
also curious how much it costs to keep that much
mass this cold continuously. You need a huge
dilution fridge which would consume some unholy
amount of liquid Helium 4. That's assuming you
got no He 3 leaks. Costs please...
The reason I ask is that not only does this thing have immense cool value, similar detectors might be very handy for SETI. We know practically nothing about the gravity wave spectrum; it's perfectly possible that the reason we can't find any alien communications with radio telescopes is because everybody's communicating with gravity waves.
So I'm eager to find out what this thing is capable of seeing.
Incidentally, I'm getting slightly disturbed how similar modern gravity wave detectors are getting to those described in David Brin's Earth. If anyone invents a strange new form of physics for manipulating singularities called cavitronics, I for one wish to emigrate to Mars.