Biggest Detector To Look For Gravitational Waves

Hugh Pickens sends in coverage in the Telegraph of a joint NASA-ESA experimental mission, to launch around 2020. It involves three spacecraft orbiting the Sun, separated by 3 million miles, each with a payload of two lasers and a 4.6-cm cube of gold-platinum alloy. The point of it all is to look for gravitational waves. The mission is called LISA, a reasonably non-strained acronym for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. The Telegraph makes a point of LISA being the largest experiment ever constructed (in terms of its dimensions). Neither that newspaper nor the project page at NASA mentions how much the experiment will cost, but it's almost certainly an order of magnitude or more above the $66 million estimated for a gravitational wave detector the size of the galaxy, which we discussed last fall.

Comments

Dimensional challenges

[SimonInOz]

I read that as a 4.6m cube of gold/platinum alloy and was thinking that was just the sort of thing Lex Luthor would want to steal.

Now come on, it'd make a great show ...

Lousy Democrats

[BitHive]

Shooting all our remaining gold into space so they can shine lasers at it. Typical.

millions

[thoughtsatthemoment]

Damn, I thought one could just write papers to prove something. Now we have to spend millions.

I was like wtf?

[future assassin]

Won't the Ferengi attack the satellites to steal the gold-pressed latinum?

Re:not funded yet

[HBoar]

I think you need to look up what the word 'orbit' means.....