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 ...

Re:Dimensional challenges

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I don't think so.

Lex looks more like the kind of guy that would take forty cakes. He would take 40 cakes. That would be as many as four tens. And that would be terrible.

Re:Dimensional challenges

[MartinSchou]

Sure ... except it's a 4.6 centimeter cube, not a 4.6 meter cube. Not worth stealing if you're Lex Luthor

Lousy Democrats

[BitHive]

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

Re:Lousy Democrats

[masterwit]

Cash4Gold is going to make a killing!

I knew those wise investors had it right all along...

Re:Lousy Democrats

[BraksDad]

This would ensure we could all see our gold glittering across the night sky. Puts a new meaning to stars wearing jewelry.

Re:Lousy Democrats

[Garridan]

Don't worry, our currency isn't based on our gold stores anymore. Didn't Ron Paul teach you people anything?

OTOH, 2 kg of gold is worth about $77k. Price of a similar amount of lead? Less than $5. Oh... you don't want it to react to the atmosphere (um... in space)? Plate it in gold, or better yet, cover it in enamel for $5 more. Makes you wonder how they spend the rest of the billions of dollars, doesn't it? I whole-heartedly support our space program, but this just pisses me off.

Re:Lousy Democrats

[jandoedel]

it's only the thin coating surrounding the mass that is made of a gold/platinum alloy, not the entire cube. So it is NOT 2kg of gold...
actually gold coatings are used quite a lot for these things.

They have a mass floating freely in space, and surrounding it is this gold/platinum coat, that never touches it, it just flies around it and has microthrusters to keep it away from the central mass. This gold/platinum coat is shielding the mass from some external influences, like the solar magnetic field, so that the central mass only feels the influence of the gravitational waves.

Unlike the "Galaxy sized detector"

[TwineLogic]

This detector would be 3,000,000 miles across when measured from one man-made component to another. The article linked to as a 'galaxy sized detector' is actually about a proposal to observe pulsars looking for the effect of gravitational waves.

When observing pulsars, I assume it is not possible to be 100% of what one is seeing, considering that pulsar observations continue to accumulate and scientists have not had the chance to see a pulsar close-up.

In comparison, using man-made scientific instruments, which are much more under the control of the investigating scientists, to perform the measurement is more trustworthy than observing pulsars. In this regard, the huge scale of the equipment (3 Million Miles) is very significant -- the instruments will be able to make a fine measurement across this distance -- and comparing it with the size of the galaxy is not really a valid comparison.

On the other hand, the snark-value of the comparison was high, and providing the link without these details only raised the snark-tasticness.

Re:Unlike the "Galaxy sized detector"

[Anonymous Coward]

...the huge scale of the equipment (3 Million Miles) is very significant -- the instruments will be able to make a fine measurement across this distance -- and comparing it with the size of the galaxy is not really a valid comparison.

It's a valid comparison because, when you're using pulsars to detect gravitational waves, the effective size of your detector is the distance from one pulsar to another, which is (some large fraction of) the size of the galaxy. Okay, pulsars aren't man-made - but if we deliberately set out to make the transmitter component of a galaxy-sized gravitational-wave detector, we wouldn't be able to produce anything nearly as suited for the task as they are. They keep time as well as our best clocks, and are trillions of times as powerful as any radio transmitter we could build (and they need to be, if we want to see them at these distances).

The snarkiness is entirely justified, I think, as a response to the Telegraph's claim that LISA is the largest gravitational wave detector, when it's not. This doesn't mean that it isn't useful, though. LISA and pulsar observations are sensitive to gravitational waves of different frequencies - about 10^-1 and 10^-9 Hz respectively - so they're complementary techniques in the same way that (say) optical and radio astronomy are.

Re:Unlike the "Galaxy sized detector"

[Nautical Insanity]

3,000,000 miles across when measured from one man-made component to another.

The article linked to as a 'galaxy sized detector'

comparing it with the size of the galaxy is not really a valid comparison.

There has to be at least one good, snarky, yo' mama joke in there.

Re:Unlike the "Galaxy sized detector"

[JakartaDean]

It's a valid comparison because, when you're using pulsars to detect gravitational waves, the effective size of your detector is the distance from one pulsar to another, which is (some large fraction of) the size of the galaxy. Okay, pulsars aren't man-made - but if we deliberately set out to make the transmitter component of a galaxy-sized gravitational-wave detector, we wouldn't be able to produce anything nearly as suited for the task as they are. They keep time as well as our best clocks, and are trillions of times as powerful as any radio transmitter we could build (and they need to be, if we want to see them at these distances).

The snarkiness is entirely justified, I think, as a response to the Telegraph's claim that LISA is the largest gravitational wave detector, when it's not. This doesn't mean that it isn't useful, though. LISA and pulsar observations are sensitive to gravitational waves of different frequencies - about 10^-1 and 10^-9 Hz respectively - so they're complementary techniques in the same way that (say) optical and radio astronomy are.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave does a pretty good job of describing these things, with the bonus that it doesn't say anything about "proving" Einstein's theory of general relativity. The take-home point is how tiny these waves are. The predicted energy is enough to distort space by 10 ^-20. From the stupid wording in the Telegraph article, the satellites will be 5 million kilometres apart, and will be able to detect displacements of "40 millionths of a millionth of a metre." So, they can detect displacement of 40*10^-12 / 5*10^9 which I get as 8*10^-22, so good enough I guess. The scales are unimaginable to me, at both ends.

Re:Unlike the "Galaxy sized detector"

[wall0159]

"The scales are unimaginable to me, at both ends."

Yup -- doesn't maths rock? It allows our stupid ape-brains to grok deep truths! :-)

Re:Unlike the "Galaxy sized detector"

[L4t3r4lu5]

Well, 5000000km is just under 4 x the diameter of the sun (1.4m km), and "40 millionths of a millionth of a metre" is as close to matter 1/333 the average thickness of a cell membrane (3nm).

Hope this clears things up for you :)

Re:Unlike the "Galaxy sized detector"

[L4t3r4lu5]

Sure! Respectively, 54500 football fields, and 0.000000000000002 football fields.

For an idea of how far the first one is, it would take Usain Bolt, at his 2008 Olympics speed of 34.5km/h (100m in 9.58s), it would take him 16 years 6 months to run that distance, a Bugatti Veyron going at top speed (409.7km/h) 1 year 3 months, and Voyager 1 (17km/s) 3.5 days :)

Costing

[kakapo]

From memory, LISA is usually listed as being in the $1.5- $2 billion dollar range, which puts in the same category as Hubble or the forthcoming James Webb telescope.

Worth every penny, too, in my opinion.

Re:Costing

[ganv]

Definitely worth every penny. Gravitation wave detection will bring a completely new window on the universe. Even the first radio telescopes or the first infrared telescopes only opened up a new part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the space observatories have simply allowed higher resolution. Gravitational observatories will be the first to see an entirely new type of radiated energy. The sensitivity of LISA and the frequency band they can study allows them to detect common gravity wave sources...as opposed to ground based instruments which are only likely to detect rare events like black hole or neutron star mergers. Seems to me that if they can get the system working in space it is essentially certain to see gravity waves.

So I didn't RTFA

[jasno]

What happens if they don't find anything?

Do gravitational waves radiate energy? Have we seen instances, such as during a supernova, where there was missing energy which could be explained by them?

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[jasno]

I guess they do carry energy, and we think we've seen proof of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulse-Taylor_binary.

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[Xaedalus]

Along these lines, how would we know if we've discovered a wave? And what would distinguish a graviton wave from a ripple in space-time?

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[Alwin Henseler]

If they're not able to obtain meaningful results (for example if something goes wrong, or the signal/noise ratio somehow gets botched so that results aren't trustworthy), it'll just improve the state of the art of the engineering involved (=not worth it).

If OTOH obtained measurements are solid, then any result is useful, even if 'the meter reads zero'. Remember this experiment would serve to support or dis-prove a theory, so either result would advance the science fields involved.

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[bill_mcgonigle]

What happens if they don't find anything?

Then it re-enforces the notion that we're living in universe that cheats. Like a simulation would.

We already have data that fits the theory so perhaps this space probe could show that it was wrong, somehow. It seems better to spend money chasing promising results, though.

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[John Hasler]

A gravitational wave is a "ripple in space-time".

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[Thinboy00]

What happens if they don't find anything?

Then it re-enforces the notion that we're living in universe that cheats. Like a simulation would.

We already have data that fits the theory so perhaps this space probe could show that it was wrong, somehow. It seems better to spend money chasing promising results, though.

Noting for reference that said link has nothing to do with simulated reality (e.g. The Matrix).

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[Lotana]

What does gravity has to do with quantum mechanics? I was under the impression that such ripples would be larger than the size required for quantum effects to occur.

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[MrZilla]

What does gravity has to do with quantum mechanics?

Oh nothing at all. It's just one of the biggest unsolved problems in physics at the moment.

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[marcosdumay]

Ok, they aren't conciliated. But quantum mechanics (QM) says nothing about gravity (that is the problem), while general relativity (GR) is nearly all about gravity. So, in a gravity experiment, people will expect the universe to behave the way GR says it will, not QM.

Now, ok, maybe the universe won't behave like GR says it will. I guess after detecting a wave, people will try to look for its causes. If there are lots of waves without a cause that fits it under GR (unlikely), I guess people will start to contest it. Anyway, QM has nothing to do witht he experiment.

Re:So I didn't RTFA

[Thinboy00]

Anyway, QM has nothing to do witht he [sic] experiment.

What if GR is wrong and some currently unknown theory of quantum gravity is right?

not funded yet

[bcrowell]

I believe the slashdot summary and TFA are misleading, because they make it sound like LISA will definitely be built. According to the WP article, LISA is competing against two other space-based science projects for funding, and the decision won't be made until 2013.

Personally, I would love to see LISA fly. Gravitational waves were first predicted in about 1914. Most aspects of general relativity have been tested pretty thoroughly at this point, but almost a century later we still have no direct confirmation that gravitational waves exist (although there is very strong indirect evidence). And if they can be detected, then it opens up an entirely new way of doing astronomy: not with electromagnetic waves, but with gravitational ones.

Re:not funded yet

[Chris Burke]

The NASA and JPL mission pages don't make it clear that this is unfunded as of yet either, which is annoying since I've been reading up on this experiment for some time and am pretty excited about it!

I, too, would love to see LISA fly. We really do need robust tests of gravity waves, and a whole new world of observations will open up to us if it pans out.

One of the coolest things about the mission itself that I read about is the 'drag free' aspect. To ensure that the test masses are in free-fall around the sun without interference by things like the pesky solar wind, they're housed free-floating in a chamber inside the LISA spacecrafts themselves. The spacecraft absorbs the solar wind or other outside forces while measuring any change in relative position to the test mass and using micro-thrusters to keep itself centered on the mass and thus in the same free-fall drag-less orbit. Effin cool imo, even if I don't think it's first time it's been done. :)

Re:not funded yet

[gyrogeerloose]

The spacecraft absorbs the solar wind or other outside forces while measuring any change in relative position to the test mass and using micro-thrusters to keep itself centered on the mass and thus in the same free-fall drag-less orbit. Effin cool imo

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that to keep the mass in the proper orbit and, I have to assume, from banging against the walls of its containment chamber, the spacecraft adjusts its position in relation to the mass, right? Effin' A, that's effin' cool.

Re:not funded yet

[dunng808]

NASA could save a lot of money by studying Kristy Alley.

Re:not funded yet

[Chris Burke]

That's my understanding as well, yep. It's a brilliant way to compensate for drag without having to measure the drag, just the resulting deviation from freefall.

Re:not funded yet

[gyrogeerloose]

Brilliant indeed. It makes me very happy that in a world that often seems so full of stupidity, there are people who are smart enough to figure that sort of thing out.

Re:not funded yet

[Cyberax]

Yes, it's not the first time.

Gravity Probe B did the same with _rotating_ _gyroscopes_. In hard vacuum. Cooled to liquid helium temperature.

Now that is cool!

Re:not funded yet

[Trecares]

But wouldn't that mean the cube's trajectory lead into the sun? The cubes would be drawn to the sun, and since the cube moves, the satellite has to move inwards, falling into the sun? Kind of reminds me of that Stargate episode where they had to tinker with the space mine heh.

Re:not funded yet

[John Hasler]

> The spacecraft absorbs the solar wind or other outside forces while
> measuring any change in relative position to the test mass and using micro-
> thrusters to keep itself centered on the mass and thus in the same
> free-fall drag-less orbit.

That method could be used to test the Pioneer Effect. You would, of course, need to keep the center of mass of the spacecraft near the center of mass of the test mass, not merely keep the test mass from touching the walls of the chamber.

Re:not funded yet

[Chris Burke]

But wouldn't that mean the cube's trajectory lead into the sun?

It'll be orbiting the sun, in an orbit much like earth's.

Re:not funded yet

[HBoar]

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

Re:not funded yet

[DryGrian]

I popped in for an obligatory "Rosie O'Donell", but I tip my hat to you, sir.

Re:not funded yet

[MichaelSmith]

> The spacecraft absorbs the solar wind or other outside forces while
> measuring any change in relative position to the test mass and using micro-
> thrusters to keep itself centered on the mass and thus in the same
> free-fall drag-less orbit.

That method could be used to test the Pioneer Effect. You would, of course, need to keep the center of mass of the spacecraft near the center of mass of the test mass, not merely keep the test mass from touching the walls of the chamber.

The system I read about used microwaves to measure the position of the test mass inside the chamber, which obviously impart momentum to the mass, so I imagine you would need to keep the test mass centered as much as possible to have any kind of precision.

Re:not funded yet

[networkBoy]

measure it from the 6 (or three if sphere) points that are equidistant from the test mass, thus while the measurement imparts some force, you are applying that force on all 6 sides of the cube.

Re:not funded yet

[MichaelSmith]

Microwave intensity follows the inverse square law so as the ball drifts from centre it experiences asymmetric force. Its picky but thats the name of the game in this experiment.

Also what about photons which naturally come off the inside of the cavity?

Re:not funded yet

[networkBoy]

someone smarter than me obviously (or not so smarter given the imperial - metric all time best screw up) is figuring that part out. :-)

millions

[thoughtsatthemoment]

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

Re:millions

[Alwin Henseler]

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

In science, the only things you can prove by writing papers is that you are able to write, or that you understand math (since ultimately, math is a matter of definition - by humans).

Proving anything else requires field-testing one way or another. Where 'field-testing' may be done in your kitchen sink, if possible.

Re:millions

[camperdave]

since ultimately, math is a matter of definition

... Or the definition of matter is math.

Re:millions

[John Hasler]

> Where 'field-testing' may be done in your kitchen sink, if possible.

Or, if you are a theoretical physicist, by somebody else.

Re:millions

[lxs]

You've obviously never met a theoretical physicist. Many are of a deep seated belief that reality is but a mere shadow of their maths. Luckily the good ones keep a sense of humor about it and give a nod in the direction of reality now and then.

Re:millions

[John Hasler]

> You've obviously never met a theoretical physicist. Many are of a deep
> seated belief that reality is but a mere shadow of their maths.

They are right.

Re:millions

[thoughtsatthemoment]

Of course. When matter is energy, and energy is matter, why can't we say math is reality and reality is math.

Re:Should we open a betting pool?

[iammani]

I bet you both are wrong. I bet gravity waves are sometimes seen, sometimes not.

I was like wtf?

[future assassin]

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

Re:I was like wtf?

[ooshna]

Yeah Platinum can be teleported and created Latinum cannot.

Re:I was like wtf?

[kybred]

Yeah Platinum can be teleported and created Latinum cannot.

I thought the 'p' in platinum was silent.

Re:Should we open a betting pool?

[3seas]

sure they do and all we have to do to prove it is get the galaxies to stand up in sequence...

LISA vs. Pulsar Observations

[stewardwildcat]

Just to let you all know, LISA and the Pulsar observations are not observing the same things. Sure they are fighting to detect the first gravitational waves but they are looking at different regimes. Its like comparing the GBT radio telescope to Hubble, they are fundamentally different even if they are looking for the same type of objects. http://www.physik.hu-berlin.de/qom/research/freqref/lisa explains what frequencies LISA will be sensitive to. The Pulsar array is most sensitive to 10^-4 where as LISA is higher frequencies. LIGO is even higher in frequency. You learn about different objects and new phenomena by studying ALL frequencies available to you. Many astronomy projects are expensive as hell but they develop new technologies that benefit our daily lives. Who knows what laser interferometry in space will generate for the public funding the project.

Re:LISA - deja vu??

[MichaelSmith]

The UI was groundbreaking, and IMHO, better than most GUIs in use today.

Re:I'll save them the trouble.

[MichaelSmith]

The local doughnut shop?

Why gold and platinum?

[MacroRodent]

Wouldn't a lump of lead work as well and be cheaper?

Re:Why gold and platinum?

[SteveFoerster]

Given how much it will cost to get these things into orbit around the sun, I'm guessing the cost of the actual materials is comparatively trivial.

Re:Why gold and platinum?

[MacroRodent]

You are probably right, but it still does not answer the question. The lump of lead is still much cheaper, so there has to be a good justification for using funds on the gold and platinum, instead of more or better instrumentation, more propellant, or other such costs of the project.

(There is also a PR angle: the use of such classic luxury materials sounds extravagant to taxpayers...)

Re:Why gold and platinum?

[Lord Crc]

Wild guess, perhaps it has something to do with reflective and thermal properties of the material?

They're using the mass as a reference for the satellite position, so I assume they measure the distance to the mass using lasers, hence the need for the mass to be reflective.

Also to increase accuracy I'm guessing that they'd want to minimize the change in physical size of the mass due to thermal fluctuations.

Or I could be completely wrong and they do it just cause it sounds cool :D

Re:Why gold and platinum?

[marcosdumay]

It's unlikely to be due to the reflectivity, if it was the case, a coated cube would be enough. Gold and platinun are known for their stability, so I guess they were choosed because the vacuum inside the ships isn't expected to be perfect (as a second tought, duh, it's inside a ship, so it can't be) and they don't want the cubes to absorb the gases around them.

Re:Why gold and platinum?

[John Hasler]

> Wouldn't a lump of lead work as well...

No. Platinum is much denser and also much harder. The cube is plated with gold because it is highly reflective and inert.

Re:Why gold and platinum?

[John Hasler]

> It's unlikely to be due to the reflectivity, if it was the case, a coated
> cube would be enough.

It is coated with gold, probably primarily for reflectivity.

> I guess they were choosed because the vacuum inside the ships isn't
> expected to be perfect (as a second tought, duh, it's inside a ship, so it
> can't be)...

It is inside a special chamber inside a spacecraft. It will have the best vacuum possible.

> ...and they don't want the cubes to absorb the gases around them.

There won't be any. However, the gold coating will help minimize the amount of gas adsorbed before the chamber is evacuated.

Re:Why gold and platinum?

[marcosdumay]

It's inside a spacecraft, that has walls, that will exalate gas at low pressures. But, ok, if it is coated, that is probably for surface effects (probably reflection).

I (miss)understood from the text that it was made of gold and platinum.

Re:Dang Demmycrats

[Garridan]

FTFY'all.

FTFY'all.

Re:Should we open a betting pool?

[Taco Cowboy]

I bet you both are wrong. I bet gravity waves are sometimes seen, sometimes not.

I bet all three of you are wrong.

When measured, kenot be observed.

When observed, kenot be measured.

Am I getting at least a patent for this?

A platinum cube?

[Dialecticus]

... each with a payload of two lasers and a 4.6-cm cube of gold-platinum alloy ...

... which they intend to use as a duodynetic field core. 5 or 6 pounds should be sufficient.

Re:A platinum cube?

[imakemusic]

5 or 6 pounds should be be enough for anyone.

ftfy

Re:A platinum cube?

[Dialecticus]

Well, enough for Spock, anyway. Any less would be tantamount to stone knives and bearskins.

Dumb question regarding gravity in general

[smooth wombat]

We know the Holy Grail is to have a Grand Unified Theory of the four forces. To date, three have been combined with gravity being the lone holdout.

Is there a reason why gravity can't be a force unto itself but rather, the result of the other three forces? By that I mean, since the Strong and Weak forces hold things together, is there some reason they can't be creating gravity with their forces weakening the further out you go, similar to how radio waves get weaker as they propagate outwards.

Even though this experiment is an attempt to detect gravitational waves, since we haven't found any to date, could the above be a different explanation for why we haven't found any (yet)?

Re:Dumb question regarding gravity in general

[hansraj]

Is there a reason why gravity can't be a force unto itself but rather, the result of the other three forces? By that I mean, since the Strong and Weak forces hold things together, is there some reason they can't be creating gravity

I am having comprehension problem with what you wrote (Not a native English speaker..). Do you mean to ask:

A) Why gravity couldn't be independent of the other three forces?, or
B) Why couldn't gravity be a manifestation of the other forces over a distance?

I might be wrong (IANAP) but the Standard Model already unifies the three other forces except Gravity. That means that if you can show that gravitational interaction arises from strong and weak interactions then essentially you have shown that the Standard Model is in fact GUT.

If on the other hand gravity is independent of the other forces then all attempts to unify gravity with them will fail, but since we assume one theory behind everything the lookout will continue.

If the continued search of gravitational waves do not succeed then in the long run it will point to serious flaws in GR. (Every failed attempt narrows down the search range of gravitational waves, and at some point the remaining range will conflict with something else).

Re:Dumb question regarding gravity in general

[smooth wombat]

B. I know I wasn't quite as elegant in my language as I should have been, but it's one of those questions I've had rattling around my skull for some time and would pop out if I met Hawking, Kaku, etc.

The question has always been, why is gravity the weakest of the three even though it's the one we're most familiar with? My solution (yeah right) would be because the other three forces are so much stronger that like radio waves, their strength decreases the further out you go.

Again, since we haven't detected any gravitational waves, using either Occam's Razor or Sherlock Holmes' comment about eliminating the impossible and whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth, it would seem the reason we can't unify gravity with the other three is because it's not a separate force, but is the result of the other three forces interacting with one another.

On a side note, if someone in the field decides to pursue this and finds I'm partially or fully correct, I want credit for it. It will probably be the only thing history will know me for (unless I'm elected benevolent dictator of Earth).

Re:Dumb question regarding gravity in general

[John Hasler]

> Again, since we haven't detected any gravitational waves, using either
> Occam's Razor or Sherlock Holmes' comment about eliminating the impossible
> and whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth...

One of the things that is left is that our detectors are not yet sensitive enough.

Re:Dumb question regarding gravity in general

[Chris Burke]

We know the Holy Grail is to have a Grand Unified Theory of the four forces. To date, three have been combined with gravity being the lone holdout.

Actually, the three forces we've unified are electricity, magnetism (as electromagnetism) and then the weak force into the "electroweak". The Strong force has yet to be unified.

Since GR came along to describe gravity not as force but as geometry, the desire to unify it has been lessened. Not that that people don't want to. But surely unifying the electroweak and strong forces comes before speculating that gravity doesn't exist unto itself and is just an aspect of the "electroweakstrong" force.

Is there a reason why gravity can't be a force unto itself but rather, the result of the other three forces? By that I mean, since the Strong and Weak forces hold things together, is there some reason they can't be creating gravity with their forces weakening the further out you go, similar to how radio waves get weaker as they propagate outwards.

*shrug* Sure. Propose a mechanism by which it could happen, see if your hypothesis makes any testable predictions, and we go from there.

Just fyi, though... The strong and weak forces both drop off at a rate much faster than the approximately inverse-square relationship of gravity. Both are really only relevant at distances on the order of the size of atomic nuclei. This is why neutrinos (and the favored dark matter candidates which are similar) are so hard to detect, because they only interact via the weak force. There's also the problem that the strong force only operates on color, which quite a few mass-full particles don't have.

But if you can think of some way that these interactions produce the long-reaching effects of gravity, more power to you!

Even though this experiment is an attempt to detect gravitational waves, since we haven't found any to date, could the above be a different explanation for why we haven't found any (yet)?

I honestly don't know how, but really, I'm not sure what the above is supposed to imply. Why wouldn't there be gravity waves in this case? The electroweak and strong forces fluctuate in a cyclical fashion, so wouldn't any effect created by those forces have the same potential?

Anyway, I wouldn't take the non-discovery of gravity waves as a huge mystery that must be solved quite yet. They're just really hard to detect, as even some of the biggest hypothetical sources produce very tiny waves with extremely long periods. LISA hasn't been launched (or even funded T_T) yet, and the longest period of gravity wave it will be able to detect is 10 seconds.

Re:Dumb question regarding gravity in general

[MightyDrunken]

There has been some attempts in the past to marry electromagnetism and gravity. This was because some of the equations look very similar, one of the most famous attempts is the "Kaluza Klein theory". This extends general relativity to 5 dimensions from there Einstein's and Mazwell's equations "pop" out. However it never got further than that as there are problems with the theory. But as I am not a physicist I have no idea on the merits or drawbacks of this approach.

A more recent hypothesis to explain gravity was by Erik Verlinde who tries to explain gravity as an entropic force. An emergent property coming from the degrees of freedom present when matter is around. In the 1970s results from calculations on black holes threw up a number of intriguing connections between thermodynamics and black holes, this led to the "holographic principle". Looks up some of these terms, they are quite fascinating though who knows if they are the right track.

Will we ever find out if 64 really is the answer?

[PDX]

Will we ever find out if 64 really is the answer? Is our universe base 8?