Slashdot Mirror
A Galaxy-Sized Observatory For Gravitational Waves
KentuckyFC writes "Gravitational waves squash and stretch space as they travel through the universe. Current attempts to spot them involve monitoring a region of space several kilometers across on Earth for the telltale signs of this squeezing. These experiments have so far seen nothing. But by monitoring an array of pulsars throughout the galaxy, astronomers should be able to see the effects of gravitational waves passing by. They say such an array of pulsars should effectively shimmer as the gravitational waves wash over it, like a grid of buoys bobbing on the ocean. That'll create an observatory that is effectively the size of the entire galaxy. These observations should be capable of monitoring how galaxies and supermassive black holes evolve together, and shed light on the physics of the early universe. Best of all, the next generation of radio-telescope arrays should be capable of making these observations at a cost of around $66 million over ten years. That's a small fraction of the hundreds of millions that Earth-based observatories have already cost."
>>> "Gravitational waves squash and stretch space as they travel through the universe
Gravitational waves are very useful in the kitchen. I use them for juicing oranges.
What do you mean finding absolutely nothing? They just ruled out the higher end of the spectrum for gravitational waves. They learned a lot in building very precisely calibrated instruments to do the gravitational wave detection. They continue to lower the detection threshold.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
that is could falsify the theory? if so then go for it.
I mean, they don't have to exist, there are other theories out there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just wanted to point out that the pulsar timing array approach will cover a completely different frequency range (~ 10^-9 to 10^-7 Hz) to existing ground-based detectors (LIGO, Virgo and friends), which operate in the 10^1 to 10^4 Hz range. In between are projects like LISA (http://lisa.jpl.nasa.gov/).
The different frequency ranges mean different astrophysical sources of gravitational waves; generally speaking, the more massive the system, the lower the GW frequency. LISA, for instance, would see the radiation produced by the supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies, while the other detectors would be targetting much smaller systems.
A human landing on mars gives us pretty pictures and a bunch of cozy, warm feelings.
Understanding fundamental physics (and mathematics) gave us the computer age along with keeping Moore's "law" working for the past 40 years. What did physics ever give to you? Pretty much every major engineering invention since 1950 depends on it in some way or other.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
> We spend billions on observatories, but what's the point?
Calm down. There is a depression going on.
All that money enters the economy employing everyone from astronomer to shoe-shine guys. In the mean time some science gets done.
If your tag line is to be believed, you will forgive us if we wait till you are actually OUT of your mom's basement before we task you with prioritizing our national science budget.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Will beings in larger galaxies taunt us because their gravity-wave detectors are bigger than ours?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
maybe we can create artificial gravity like in the movies without having to have big centrifuges built into the hulls.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
No it isn't, you fool. There's no Grand Scientist Bureaucracy where they dole out what every scientist is going to work on. There are many different fields and many different scientists who would like to work on many different things. Damn false dichotomies with you people, get a grip on reality for IPU sake.
If there are no gravitational waves to be found? If we search the entire spectrum, and we don't find any, then I assume that falsifies the grav-wave theory (and the entire Honorverse). At that point, what is the next step/theory? In a related note, does gravity pull, or push? I think I remember reading somewhere that Einstein said gravity pushed, rather than pulled.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
That's correct. Lack of evidence isn't enough to disprove a theory; what you need is evidence that directly contradicts the theory. In the case of gravity waves, it might be observation of an event that should produce detectable gravity waves, combined with our not detecting them.
And, while I'm at it, I'd like to point out that what Popper taught us was that a theory was useless unless there's a way to falsify it, at least in theory. If you can find a way to show that any conceivable experimental results can be viewed as confirming the theory, it's useless because it can't be tested. In the case of gravity waves, they're but one of many things predicted by General Relativity, and one of the few that's not been observed as yet.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Since when does everything science accomplish have to have immediate material benefit to humanity? Science is the advancement of Homo sapien knowledge about the universe. If you're going to complain about spending money complain about throwing trillions of dollars at the people who brought down the economy. Some people need to grow up.
What do you mean finding absolutely nothing?
Judging by his links to thunderbolts.info, what I think he means is "I'm a crazy idiot who doesn't understand anything, and think this is a sound foundation to question the work of scientists everywhere. Solar wind is caused by an electric field! What do you mean it's a plasma with equal amounts of positive and negative charges, and a field can't move opposite charges in the same direction? No really, I have no idea what you're talking about because I never too physics in school! But my theories are right anyway!"
The enemies of Democracy are
If every observatory ever built were using a galaxy as a sort of measuring instrument, then yeah. What's your point?
Thats what I don't understand - how do you use the galaxy as a measuring instrument?
"Gravitational waves squash and stretch space as they travel through the universe."
Does anyone else find these words to be a little presumptuous. It's not like they've ever detected any. Might I suggest the following wording instead:
"Gravitational waves would squash and stretch space as they travel through space, if they exist"
Nothing to do with iDiots. Or does it ?
Umm...actually finding gravitational waves would help 100% of the population. That, and the weight of gravitrons. I'd like the theory holding me to the ground to become a law sometime-not too keen on drifting out of the atmosphere on a whim of disbelief...
I agree that we should be funding the tracking of NEOs more, but remember that the money for these two projects isn't coming from the same pool. One is a NASA sub-project, the other is an international project conducted by a variety of observatories and funded by a variety of organizations. So it's not as simple as "do this instead of that".
The enemies of Democracy are
He's 15 years old. It's much easier for him to understand and critique something that has been summed up than to spend the time and critical thought necessary to understand our present economy. Let's give the little bastard^Wwhippersnapper a break, he's trying.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Pulsars are your measuring instruments. They feed back their measurements as a periodic electromagnetic signal. Since the period, per pulsar, is standard any deviation could indicate a measurement to be researched. Pulsars are distributed roughly equally throughout the galaxy, so in theory we can use the entire galaxy as our observatory.
Disclaimer: not an astrophysicist, I could be entirely wrong.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
Exactly. So, why should we be spending money that we don't have?
Finding gravitational waves isn't going to help 99.99% of the population.
How about you look at this this way instead:
There is a lot of money going around to try to help a flailing economy. Why should that money go ONLY to those who have been bad at their business? Automakers that don't make the right cars? Banks that don't have solid lending strategies? Why NOT give some of that money that's all going to the same economy to scientists who quietly go about their business and get things done?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
LIGO and Pulsars set limits (or could detect) gravitational waves in very different parts of their frequency spectra - periods of milli seconds versus periods of months. The sources are different, the detection physics is different, etc. It's certainly worth trying both.
Also, none of the existing detectors are good enough that you can say for certain that there are known or likely astrophysical sources bright enough that they should see them. You can't talk about falsifiability until you cross that threshold, which I would expect to see happen in a decade or so.
So, stop me if I'm way off base, but might it be impossible to detect gravity waves? If a gravity wave is a change in the gravitational constant of a finite space, then wouldn't that affect the mass, and the space-time qualities of a sensor within that space, rendering its observations relative, and useless?
Or does my thought experiment lack a certain... Knowledge?
Thanks!
> Exactly. So, why should we be spending money that we don't have?
Because you can not frugally "save" your way out of a depression. That simply leads to a deeper depression.
Its cheaper to build these things (as well as other infrastructure) in a down economy than wait till everyone if fully employed and demanding big salaries.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The speed of light is actually the speed of energy, so if gravity waves are energy, then it will be at or slightly below the speed of light. Otherwise, if it's matter-based, then its maximum speed would be about the speed of sound. I believe.
> I would love to know how fast gravity waves travel.
At the speed of light.
> If a black hole can keep light from escaping, that means the speed of light
> isn't escape velocity, and that means that gravity is getting to it faster
> than the speed of light?
Gravitational radiation does not come from inside a black hole any more than electromagnetic radiation comes from inside an electron.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
> They just ruled out the higher end of the spectrum for gravitational waves.
No. They failed to detect high-frequency gravitational radiation above a certain level. Conventional theory predicts that the radiation they failed to detect should be fairly rare, so the result tends to confirm the established theory while leaving the proponents of some alternative theories with some explaining to do.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I seem to recall an experimental observation in the last few years involving Jupiter, through which they verified with about 90% certainty that the speed at which gravity propagates through space/time is equal to the speed of light.
A little googling turned this up:
http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2003/gravity/index-p.shtml
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
> We spend billions on observatories, but what's the point?
To learn.
> I understand taking an in-depth look at our galaxy, but this is ridiculous.
Why?
> We should concentrate on landing on mars...
Well, then you and your colleagues[1] should concentrate away. Meanwhile, these people choose to concentrate on something else.
[1] I assume you have colleagues: why else do you write "we"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Is it Crackpot Hour on Slashdot tonight? First electric universe, and now free energy?
> Since when does everything science accomplish have to have immediate material benefit to humanity?
To play devil's advocate... it's not so much a matter of "what science accomplishes" as "who pays for it". One is entitled to some sort of opinion when one is paying for it, via tax dollars.
It is, as you point out, shortsighted to assume that all science must have an immediate benefit to be worth it. But it is worth considering whether money spent on basic research might be better spent elsewhere.
(Personally, I'd rather spend a lot more on basic research, but those who want to pay less for it are entitled to an opinion when it's their money.)
Gravitational waves are basic research. You don't get much more basic than wave propagation of a fundamental force.
After all, I am strangely colored.
they did. telescopes are clocks. Radiotelescopes are extremely high temporal resolution clocks.
After all, I am strangely colored.
This space intentionally left blank.
Gravitational waves are a consequence of general relativity, so IF gravitational waves don't exist then GR is at least partly wrong. That's a bit stronger than believing in Santa Claus I'd think.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
The sad thing is that I've met plenty of computer geeks who basically say that physics is useless. They then go back to their beloved computers without realizing the tragic irony of what they just said. That's the pathetic thing about computer "science" majors. They think they know everything because they know how to fuck around with a computer, but they are too stupid to realize that they don't know usually what they are talking about.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I believe that any theory of gravity where
1. Energy is conserved
2. Gravitational information propagates at a finite speed (most theories set this speed equal to the speed of light)
will have gravitational waves of some sort.
Is there any physicist who does not believe in both 1 and 2?
Gravitational waves exit. The real problem is detecting them and interpreting the waveforms.
That's correct. Lack of evidence isn't enough to disprove a theory; what you need is evidence that directly contradicts the theory.
We are approaching the point where the lack of evidence becomes evidence of non-existance. But as of yet, I know of no alternative theory.
The guy you're responding to, tjstork, is an idiot, not worth your time. He's also a conservative, but I repeate myself. The only reason it's relevant is that his opinions come from his ideology. In his mind, you are already wrong because you like science, and science is paid for in large part by public dollars. This makes science the enemy to him.
He'll stick to his scientifically ignorant position, and you will fail to educate him.
Just a heads up.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
"Umm...actually finding gravitational waves would help 100% of the population."
Finding gravity waves is the key to finding anti-gravity waves. You see, every particle has its anti-particle. The are electrons and positrons. The are protons and anti-protons. There are top quarks and there are bottom quarks. There are charming quarks and there are boring quarks. There are gluons and anti-gluons. Just imagine what a beam of these would do to your enemy. Leaves nothing but quarks flying in all directions! Not a pretty sight. There is the w-boson, also called the "God particle" and its opposite - the "Atheist particle." Then finally there are gravitons and there are anti-gravitons. Anti-gravitons are the basis of your common tractor beam. I hope you found this discussion illuminating.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, you really, really, don't get it. It's not like someone one day decided there are gravity waves, and conned people into spending millions on tests for them.
Eintein's theory of General Relativity (GR) predicts that gravity waves exist, and GR has already made several other verified predictions. It's a bit like a boat in the water. What we've verified with GR already is that the boat displaces water, this is the distortion that objects with mass cause to occur on spacetime. Gravity waves would be the wake the boat leaves behind as it moves through the water.
This is expected to be most evident in binary star systems, as the stars rotating around one another have a relatively high angular momentum, as well as the large masses required to make gravity waves easier to detect.
Now, your analogy to Santa Claus is pretty bad, what with Santa being based on myth and all, but if we ignore that for a second and ran with it, it'd be saying something like this:
We can see a flying sled, pulled by reindeer in the sky between December 24th and 25th. Also, any house this sled visits finds mysteriously delivered presents under their Christmas tree, which no one in the house placed there. We haven't seen anyone in the sled, but we believe that the sled is related to the presents appearing on that particular night. So now we're looking for the little man in the sled (maybe it's an elf, maybe it's Santa, maybe it's Jack Skellington for all we know) that we believe is dropping off the presents. For the last experiment, we looked for things at eye level, but saw no one. Therefore, if there is someone coming into the house from the sled, they must be shorter than 6', thereby ruling out Jack Skellington. We have now developed a new tests that will look two foot above, and two foot below our eye level.
Science isn't just about observing events and figuring out the cause. It's also about attempting to make predictions based on existing knowledge, and verifying those predictions with experiments.
PS - Wow, that analogy was painful to continue running with <.<
Eintein's theory of General Relativity (GR) predicts that gravity waves exist, and GR has already made several other verified predictions. It's a bit like a boat in the water. What we've verified with GR...
No, but my point is that every breakthrough in physics came through because people were ho hum and looking through some theory where they expected to find a result, and didn't. Once upon a time people thought Newtonian mechanics was all there was. We think 100 years of Einstein (wow!), is a long time, but just imagine 300 years of Newtonian physics. All these famous problems that lead to quantum physics - like where does the sun get its energy from, black body radiation, brownian motion, etc, are all really edge cases of newtonian physics.
Science isn't just about observing events and figuring out the cause. It's also about attempting to make predictions based on existing knowledge, and verifying those predictions with experiments.
But its not really useful, unless those predictions were wrong. That's my point. If they find gravity waves, and it confirms GR, that's all well and good but it doesn't really do anything useful as it doesn't change anything and in that sense its a waste of money. But, if there are no gravity waves, or, more spectacularly, there is no Higgs Bosun, then, really, our understanding or rather, physics understanding, of how gravity and mass works is completely wrong, and that would be as interesting as when Rutherford first aimed a beam at a gold foil and realized that the density of the gold is not uniform and got a rather surprising finding about how small atomic nuclei are relative to the size of the space around them.
This is my sig.
Gravitational waves are a consequence of general relativity, so IF gravitational waves don't exist then GR is at least partly wrong. That's a bit stronger than believing in Santa Claus I'd think
Well, if GR was wrong on that score, don't you think physics would suddenly get a lot more interesting? I mean, seriously, its the prospect of Santa Claus popping up and gravity waves not being there that really, fundamentally, the human force that drives science. People want to be surprised by the experiments that they do.
This is my sig.
I know it's counter intuitive, and back when I was about your age (that's right, I'm patronising you. Feels good man.) I myself didn't get it, but basic science (the kind that seems like useless theoretical dicking around like that gravitational waves thing) is a sort of long term investment, and a great kind of investment, as you can get several times your investment back.
Think about it, what good was nuclear research in the 19th century? Yet a few decades later they probably kept us safe from an all out war against USSR, they power clean power plants, submarines, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and space probes. The research on quantum physics keeps on giving more and more, mostly as we manufacture things that keep getting smaller, like computer chips. We wouldn't have GPS if it wasn't for Einstein's relativity, and I let you guess what good did research that made transistors was good for. If you look into any technology and progress you'll find that at its root is basic research that wasn't obviously going to give that. Who would have thought that research in chemistry and fluid physics would get us to the moon?
So what do you know, maybe when you'll be older you'll owe your flying car to current research on gravitational waves.
Also, look at it this way. If we only did applied research to find things with direct applications, we wouldn't have gotten far. A good analogy is, if explorers had always only sailed within sight of a coast, we would have never discovered the Americas.
You just got troll'd!
Hang on, even better. Look at all that money being spent on womens hadbags. It's billions upon billions. What about makeup or alternative medicine with evidence that it does not work. We are now into the trillions ...
So I propose before you take a hit on science, maybe you should look at so much other usless spending and save a few kids from hunger
YEs NO ?
I really expected that link to redirect to http://www.timecube.com/
Awesome! Please continue.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
No, were not. Our instruments are still not nearly sensitive enough to say that.
The theoretical reasons, in this case, include General Relativity, as your first link points out. That's passed a lot of other tests, and dropping it would take some big reasons. Trouble confirming just one of many predictions? Interesting, but not excuse enough to abandon a highly successful theory, not at all. Get a competing theory that has substantially more predictive power, and makes substantially fewer untestable claims, and scientists will generally switch, but none of the electric universe models and such proposed are doing any better than GR, and in fact are generally much worse. You've read Sir Karl, but you might want to look at Thomas Kuhn, particularly about how much better a new theory has to be before scientists switch in mass.
The first page you link to characterises the next step in current research as a shift to looking at the noise, when the researchers themselves call it looking at stochastic effects. Stochastic processes must have random elements by definition, and noise, (either literal as in sound or more generally as in signal to noise ratios for all communication) has random aspects as well, but stochastic properties in data are NOT the same thing as noise in communication/observation - In this case, noise in the observations we have on the CBR is probably very different from stochastic effects that may have modulated that same CBR at the time it was emitted. Now it may be possible to prove the two are in fact inextricably linked, which would be a proof on a level with the one showing the total information contained in a black hole is directly related to its surface area. Nice if someone can actually craft the math, but last I looked, no one had succeeded. Without that, the page is too strident for the facts.
Who is John Cabal?
Doesnt mean its not true...Democritus 2400 years ago proposed the existence of the atom.
He had no way testing this, he simply used logic to deduce it.
Hmm. Please do not explain physics in the future. :-(
Not that relativity is particularly easy, but... just no.
pun intended
Ask Me About... The 80's!
I'm really starting to hate the Santa Claus metaphor. There really was a historical person, Nicholas of Cusa, who was Bishop Nicholas in life but became known after his death as Saint Nicolas. That title got shortened and linguistically shifted to Santa Claus.* So technically, there was a Santa Claus, and its just some of the claims made, like his continuing to live today, having flying reindeer or residing at the north pole, that are contra-factuals. Some of the claims, such as his giving a great deal to many people, are facts. Some others, such as giving to the nice and not the naughty as best he could determine, may be factual as well.
* Copernicus never spelled his own name that way, it's a translation to some sort of approximate Latinate/English. The same goes for Christopher Columbus, So if you want to argue that technically Santa Claus never existed under that exact name, fine, but you can do the same for all the other people who are referred to historically by a nick-name.
Jack Skellington is an entirely fictional character, as are Frodo Baggins, Moll Flanders, and the Easter Bunny. Saint Nicholas is a historical person who has simply had more myths and legends attach themselves to him than has George Washington, also still a historical person despite the Cherry Tree and Dollar across the Potommac stories.
Who is John Cabal?
That position makes science itself entirely useless.
(Unless you can prove scientifically that science is the best way of determining objective truth, and neither we, nor any hypothetical beings living anywhere else in the universe, no matter how powerful their minds are, can ever invent anything better than the scientific method.).
Popper's falsification was a philosophical concept, and might be falsifiable by logic or philosophical debate, but it's not part of science itself, any more than the claim that science works better than every possible alternative could itself be science.
For more on this, try Godel. A sufficiently powerful formal system contains or generates propositions whose truth or falsity cannot be proved within the system. You have to prove some of the claims about science using something besides science itself - If that wasn't necessary, science would be insufficiently powerful to rely upon as a guide to anything important, in much the same way as you couldn't do economics with an arithmetic that didn't include fractions or negative numbers.
Who is John Cabal?
Why can't our great minds that are exploring the Galaxy construct their Observatories on the Moon? Maybe on both Poles? The clarity of their images, I believe, would be fairly difficult to equal across any collections of arrays on Earth.
Vacuums contain material, dude. My Dyson is almost full.
The Universe has a foamy head?
If gravity waves distort space-time, then how can you extricate the observer from her own deformable frame of reference long enough to make a measurement? Shouldn't there be a quantum effect, like teleportation, if a distortion is detected? Since the effect would probably be small, it would probably show up as weird stuff like unexplained cold or miniscule loss of mass in a reference object.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
No, not quite.
Remeber that mass causes a curvature in spacetime ( General Relativity ), so inside the event horizion, spacetime is curved in on itself so much that light cannot escape, as all possible directions inside the event horizion point towards the center. While a 'calculated' escape velocity inside the event horizion may turn out to be a speed higher than lightspeed, no matter can ever reach that speed.
As far as we can tell, gravity moves at the speed of light, so therefore gravitational waves will have a speed limit of lightspeed.
This is precisely this type of condescending, we-are-am-smater-than-you attitude that turns people off on science and scientists. Maybe physicists should concentrate on the foundational issues (e.g., the true nature of motion) first before they go chasing after gravity waves. You folks are not as smart as you think you are.
But of course you are as smart as you think, which is smarter than every other physicist alive or dead (while so pointedly stating that you aren't one), so this is the kind of condescending attitude we need. LOL.
Did you know that over 90% of physicists believe that matter can move in spacetime even though it is known that spacetime is frozen from the infinite past to the infinite future?
Spacetime isn't frozen. It's warped by mass and constantly expanding. "Did you know" indeed. :)
Did you know that most physicists believe that moving bodies remain in motion for no reason at all, as if by magic?
They also believe that bodies at rest remain at rest for no reason at all, as if by magic! This is no more mysterious.
Well, magic, and that and for it to do otherwise in either case would require an expenditure of energy and a transfer of momentum.
I'll admit, I bit and read the blog, and it was highly amusing. It was very humorous reading about how you agree with Aristotle* that there must be a "force" to make an object move at a constant velocity, and the object should instantly stop as soon as that "force" is removed. And therefore there must be "energy" around us to make this happen. As if "force" and "energy" are vague, mysterious entities, like a sci-fi writer referring to a "mysterious force" or "a being of pure energy".
But actually, force is a change in momentum. If there was a net force acting on a moving object, it would accelerate (or decelerate). If there's no force on an object, it can't accelerate or decelerate, i.e. its velocity must be constant. If the speed of the object changes, then there was a transfer of energy. Energy, by the way, is the principle Newton was looking for. It's the transfer and storage of energy in various forms that explains how objects can begin moving, and continue moving. Conservation of energy was formulated not too long after Newton's conservation of momentum and fills in what Newton couldn't.
The problem with upending physics is that you have to understand it first. This has been the case for all the great physicists, and it's the case today. And you don't understand causality. An object changing its speed, going from motion to no motion, is the effect, and for this to happen there must be a measurable cause, specifically a transfer of momentum and energy. So, please, Conservation of Energy demands an answer: in the absence of any outside force, why would an object moving at a constant velocity stop?
* Great thinker but lousy physicist -- thought his ideas were so good they didn't need testing**! Must be why you're drawn to him. ;)
** Maybe if he had, he would have realized that he was close but off on his idea of an object's natural state in the absence of interference being one of rest, when it's really one of constancy, and we would have Aristotle's Laws of Motion.
The enemies of Democracy are
The lack of positive results in gravitational wave detection and the Higgs search reminds me of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Sure I know that we're only scraping the bottom/top of the possible ranges for these phenomena, but I wonder if we aren't just killing time until the next Einstein comes along to explain that there is no luminous aether.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
The sad thing is that I've met plenty of computer geeks who basically say that physics is useless. They then go back to their beloved computers without realizing the tragic irony of what they just said.
Still, you're making that remark using a web browser running on top of a software stack made up of at least a multi-tasking OS kernel, a dynamic linker and an assortment of userspace libraries, written in various high-level programming languages with optimising compilers. It's not as if the transistors came up with all that by themselves.
Physics in itself is important, there's just no need for most people to be physicists.
...well, OK, not in terms of energy consumption, but still thinking big! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
I suspect that the gravitational waves are obscured by the dark matter
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I was in an academic computer lab devoted to the sciences once. The disdain for computer scientists was clearly evident. All the while they used numeric algorithms computer scientists discovered and operating systems that were the result of a lot of work by computer scientists, and any number of other artifacts of the 'science' they so disparaged.
I found it really disheartening, and it left me with a really bad taste in my mouth about scientists. Perhaps things have changed now, but at the time, 10-20 years ago or so, disrespect for the people who made the tools that made their investigations even possible was rampant.
The funny thing is, chemists respect the people who make their glassware. I imagine the construction of telescopes is a respected field for astronomers. But computer science seems not to garner any respect among scientists.
Maybe the problem is that it should just never have been named computer 'science'. I don't think it's a science any more than mathematics is.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The problem with all this is that the original claims for the LIGO detector were that it would detect something ... Remember, LIGO's predecessor was a huge iridium bar that also detected nothing. Furthermore, LIGO was significantly improved during its operation, and yet it still found nothing. Now the scientists involved claim they never expected it to find anything? Sounds like the multibillion we have poured into the cure for cancer ... still haven't got that! Take another several billion for the next 10 years.
Perhaps gravity doesn't work exactly the way they think? If so, might explain a lot of questions regarding dark matter/energy.
...........*BOOM*
surely?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Saint Nicholas is a historical person who has simply had more myths and legends attach themselves to him than has George Washington, also still a historical person despite the Cherry Tree and Dollar across the Potommac stories.
The myth of Santa Claus has taken such a scale that, though Saint Nicholas might be a historical person, it's fair to say that Santa Claus is a separate entity, a myth based on a historical figure.
So what do you know, maybe when you'll be older you'll owe your flying car to current research on gravitational waves.
And gravity-defying breast implants for your wife...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
It takes you literally a single mouse click to find out who I am, but I guess that would take a little bit of marbles, huh?
Are we fish in the ocean, trying to detect pressure waves in the water ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Sorry - couldn't help myself - if you're going to identify yourself as someone's better, ...
s/bald/hairless/; s/hairless/bold/;
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
was poppers idea of falsification falsifiable..?
well actually it doesn't seem to be if you think about it.
i would say that for an idea to have any usefulness in terms of science, it ought to be able to stand up to itself.
I think the claim that the way of falsification is the best way to determine the truth is indeed falsifiable.
An experiment could be as follows:
You set up a truth to discover (say, in form of a computer game where you have to find out how some in-game machinery works). Now you get people to find out the truth, either with the method of falsification, or with some other method to be tested against it. If the other method consistently turns up to be more effective, then falsification as best method to find the truth is falsified.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Skimming through everything, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the short story "Standard Candles" by Jack McDevitt. In it, the presence of certain star types suggests a massive extraterrestrial beacon system. While certainly a bit farfetched, why not throw out that the presence of pulsars themselves is simply a trans-galactic gravity wave testing system?
We are virgin males who are into Computer Science. We are not into astronomy.
Who is "we"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Why did you bother posting?
No, I'm "not even" wrong, I'm experimentally verifiably right.
And you on the other hand are experimentally verifiably wrong.
It's sad that you think Newton endorses your viewpoint, because you don't understand that he's explaining a simple problem that the only force that the Laws of Motion define is the reactive force, so in a system with no initial movement, how is movement then imparted. The answer is that there must be some other force outside the Laws of Motion, and there is. Gravity, for instance. That's why Newton didn't spend a lot of time on the issue. You're just confused and ignorant enough that you misinterpret him horribly.
As Wolfgang Pauli would say "Who is this idiot quoting me in support of his crackpot theory? Hey kid: Take a real physics class, you might learn something."
The enemies of Democracy are
On a mission to refute ignorant crack-pottery, in the hopes that onlookers won't be bamboozled by bullshit, even if it is just an elaborate troll. But gutless? Please, bitch. You're the one dodging. Answer the Conservation of Energy question or shut the fuck up forever. May your rampant auto-fellation result in asphyxia.
The enemies of Democracy are
From the Wikipedia article on 'Vacuum':
a perfect vacuum with gaseous pressure of exactly zero is only a philosophical concept and never is observed in practice.
also:
Upright designs usually employ a rotating brushroll or beater bar, which removes dirt through a combination of sweeping and vibration.
I believe the GP used the term bald in the sense of:
lacking detail; bare; plain; unadorned: a bald prose style.
Or maybe even:
open; undisguised: a bald lie.
If you are going to be a pedant, at least be familiar with the multiple definitions of a term, and maybe question whether the modern or popular definition is or is not the original definition. My guess is the latter.
It's fun to nitpick strangers, isn't it?
You'd rather prove you have no stones than prove you have no clue.
Yeah, that's what I thought, bitch.
The enemies of Democracy are
Why should that money go ONLY to those who have been bad at their business?
wait, you don't still think they were trying to fix the economy, do you?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the exact post where Louis Savain lost the rest of his mind.