Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Gear Up To Catch a Gravitational Wave
sciencehabit writes: A patch of woodland just north of Livingston, Louisiana, population 1893, isn't the first place you'd go looking for a breakthrough in physics. Yet it is here that physicists may fulfill perhaps the most spectacular prediction of Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, or general relativity. Structures here house the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), an ultrasensitive instrument that may soon detect ripples in space and time set off when neutron stars or black holes merge. Einstein himself predicted the existence of such gravitational waves nearly a century ago. But only now is the quest to detect them coming to a culmination. Physicists are finishing a $205 million rebuild of the detectors, known as Advanced LIGO, which should make them 10 times more sensitive and, they say, virtually ensure a detection.
Because climatologists never use field data...
Oh wait, they do, that must me you're either a liar or a retard.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Like what? It's designed to detect gravitational waves. It's not designed to detect not-gravitational waves. Since we can't produce artificial gravitational waves (the detector would be almost pointless if we could, since it's meant to prove the existence of gravitational waves), we can't use a known test to confirm it's detecting gravitational waves and only gravitational waves, but since all our theory and all our observation says it should be detecting them and only them, it's fairly safe to assume it's actually doing so (assuming no systematic errors: a large assumption, but not an unreasonable one if everyone involved did their job). In fact, if what it detects isn't gravitational waves, it's almost more interesting, because that means it's detecting something else which isn't accounted for in our theory. If it detects nothing at all, well, that too would be interesting, since (again) our theory says it should. Either way, interesting.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Fortunatley, they don't, and you're still either a liar or a retard. One thing is for sure, you're beneath contempt.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Climatologists get paid whether the world is warming or cooling, and it's not as if the politicians are doing much in regards to what the scientists are saying.
Besides, there's a lot more profit in being a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry.
But hey, maybe you can hire Ben Stein to narrate a documentary detailing how all the biolo... er climatologists are in an evil cabal to hide the truth.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
> These detectors will let us do gravitational wave astronomy much like we do with light and radio waves now.
Mmmm, more like neutrino I'd say. You can't point your GWD at an object.
If you're a climate scientist who says there's no Anthropogenic Climate Change, there are lots of Fossil Fuel groups that will shower you with money - much like Tobacco companies would to any Scientists that said Smoking doesn't cause Cancer.
And yet, it's the ones who report the opposite that get accused of being on the take, when their findings match what everyone else in their field (except those taking money from the fossil fuel industry) almost universally report.