New Distributed Project Seeks Gravity Waves

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."

Comments

What do gravity waves tell us?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do gravity waves tell us that EM radiation doesn't? Will these measurements allow us to image distant objects that are otherwise invisible?

Re:What do gravity waves tell us?

[StupendousMan]

First, the direct detection of gravitational waves would confirm certain aspects of the theory of general relativity, as other posters have noted.

Second, gravitational wave detectors will provide us with a new window to the universe. Ordinary stars emit mostly visible light, so ordinary optical telescopes are well suited to their study. Cold clouds of interstellar gas emit mostly radio waves, so radio telescopes are the best choice to study them. We know of certain objects --- relatively uncommon ones -- which ought to produce a good deal of gravitational radiation: very massive objects moving very quickly, such as pairs of black holes or neutron stars orbiting around each other at small distances. Gravitational wave detectors will allow astronomers to study the properties of these objects more precisely than we can with ordinary telescopes (since they do not emit much electromagnetic radiation).

Finally, it is possible (though I suspect unlikely) that the universe may contain a whole class (or classes) of objects which are currently unknown to us, but which will appear as strong sources of gravitational radiation. Almost every time astronomers have added a new type of telescope to their toolkit, they have stumbled across previously unknown phenomena. The first gamma-ray telescopes, for example, revealed gamma-ray bursts, which were completely undetected (and unexpected) by other means in the late sixties and early seventies.

One last note: LIGO and other gravitational wave detectors provide very poor angular resolution, compared to ordinary optical telescopes. They will tell us something like "a source of gravitational waves is over there, about 10 degrees above the horizon at 5 degrees south of East." The "error circle" for a typical detection will be a few degrees in size. It may be quite a challenge for astronomers to identify the optical counterpart to a new source of gravitational waves, since there will usually be thousands to millions of optical sources within the error box of a gravitational wave detection.

Bah humbug.

[dauthur]

Even though it's one of the most popular philisophical astronomy books ever, A Brief History Of Time (Stephen Hawking) really happened to open up my eyes, and I sought extra reading. After all this time, even beforeward, I knew about gravitational waves considering the 4th dimension. The thought of actual waves though seems hard to imagine, considering gravity comes from mass, not anything non-particle. The idea that a massive supernova could propel gravitational waves at us in such a way as it does micro gamma and cosmic waves sounds absolutely rediculous unless, of course, the actual mass encounters us too (That would take a while).