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New Distributed Project Seeks Gravity Waves

Posted by timothy on from the jeff-spicolli-knows-where-they're-at dept.

fenimor writes "Much like the popular SETI@Home distributed computing project that searches radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life, the new Einstein@Home will search for gravitational waves in data collected by U.S. and European gravitational wave detectors. Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916, but only now has technology reached the point that scientists hope to detect them directly."

2 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Relevant link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/

    Posting as AC to avoid karma whoring.

  2. Re:What do gravity waves tell us? by cot · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you detect gravity waves from sources like supernovae, black hole collisions, etc. you're confirming that Einstein's GR works and that the properties of the waves (ie amplitude, duration) make sense for that particular source.

    If you can detect primordial gravity waves from the very early universe(harder!), you now have an indication that inflation (rapid expansion) of the universe is a reasonable cosmological model rather than its current somewhat ad hoc status. It nicely explains away some problems with simpler models, but no real direct test has been performed to show that it happened.

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