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LIGO Will Make Gravitational Waves Announcement on Thursday

Posted by yaelk on from the making-waves dept.

StartsWithABang writes: When we look out into the Universe, we normally gain information about it by gathering light of various wavelengths. However, there are other possibilities for astronomy, including by looking for the neutrinos emitted by astrophysical sources - first detected in the supernova explosion of 1987 - and in the gravitational waves emitted by accelerating masses. These ripples in the fabric of space were theorized back in the early days of Einstein's General Relativity, and experiments to detect them have been ongoing since the 1960s. However, in September of 2015, Advanced LIGO came online, and it was the first gravitational wave observatory that was expected to detect a real gravitational wave signal. The press conference on Thursday is where the collaboration will make their official announcement, and in the meantime, here's an explainer of what gravitational waves are, what Advanced LIGO can teach us, and how.

120 comments

  1. Welcome to the gravitynet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    How cool would it be if they found modulation in the gravities?

    Finally we can watch porn via gravity instead of being hindered by it.

    1. Re:Welcome to the gravitynet by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

      You'll still have to log in to Forbes to see it.

      (it's left as an exercise for the reader to create his own malware joke).

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:Welcome to the gravitynet by avandesande · · Score: 2

      .... or an alien intelligence has sent us in code the script to a movie about aliens sending plans for a teleportation machine

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    3. Re:Welcome to the gravitynet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ARS technica has a free one

      http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/after-100-years-scientists-are-finally-closing-in-on-einsteins-ripples/

    4. Re:Welcome to the gravitynet by flopsquad · · Score: 1

      Every sufficiently advanced species receives this message and arrives at an existential turning point:

      Either the planet's warring tribes and factions come together to make the film according to the aliens' script, proving themselves worthy to begin a 10,000 year "unpaid internship" fetching space lattes for alien directors;

      or,

      They ignore the message, puttering along trying to make it on their own as an indy civilization, probably never moving out of their home system.

      --
      Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
    5. Re:Welcome to the gravitynet by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      I wish I had mod points for this.

  2. And the announcement will be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    "We expect to find some any day now."

    1. Re:And the announcement will be by RenderSeven · · Score: 4, Funny

      For an announcement, yes. But this was an announcement for an announcement, like a trailer, so the reveal is probably bigger. And no spoilers please. Clearly the NSF and DOE want the VIP's at LIGO in LA, WA and MIT want to keep the PC on the QT, 'cause if it leaks to CNN and MSNBC the UK and EU might cut the GWIC budget PDQ for AIGO and GEO and the VC's would go MIA. And then we'd all be put on KP.

    2. Re:And the announcement will be by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Harvey and Sheila approve.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    3. Re:And the announcement will be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Gravity is a lie. I've never seen it.

      It's okay mate, jump over the cliff and you'll feel it alright.

    4. Re:And the announcement will be by Bengie · · Score: 1

      What we call Gravity is just warped space time. We think we're accelerating down towards the Earth when really we're accelerating up away from it.

    5. Re:And the announcement will be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's only a theory, anyways.

  3. heavy, man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    wow man, like really heavy stuff!

    1. Re:heavy, man! by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 3, Funny

      There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

    2. Re:heavy, man! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Apparently, there is variation in the gravity, which is detected by LIGO. I know, I'll show myself out.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    3. Re: heavy, man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Apk, you sad little psycho, give it a rest already and do something useful like wanking or suicide.

  4. Shame on you slashdot for this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ad blocker hostile link.

    Sorry Forbes, nothing you write is worth turning off blockers.

    1. Re:Shame on you slashdot for this... by Bengie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Slashdot needs to start a blacklist of domains, starting with forbes and medium.

    2. Re:Shame on you slashdot for this... by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      Medium is a matter of personal taste. Forbes is just evil.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
  5. UNABLE TO REPLICATE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Marked as: WON'T FIX, CAN'T RECREATE PROBLEM

    (Don't use so many caps. Don't use so many caps. Don't use so many caps.)

  6. I dunno .. by OzPeter · · Score: 1

    Here's a thought, why not wait until Thursday for the actual announcement instead of feeding shill accounts that link to ad block un-friendly sites who have been known purveyors of malware via ads???????

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    1. Re:I dunno .. by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here's a thought, why not wait until Thursday for the actual announcement...

      So that we'll know to go to an actual news site on Thursday instead of waiting until Monday for Slashdot to run it.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  7. And how does this help the people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    This Republican-style corporate welfare is just sad.

    1. Re:And how does this help the people? by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 1

      What?!? Gravity is a communist conspiracy.... the matter all just collects together and in extreme cases fuses to become a single entity!

      Real americans support big bangs, let the invisible hand of the universe guide your particles.

    2. Re: And how does this help the people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      xians don't believe in the Big Bang, which proves you wrong.

    3. Re: And how does this help the people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't chime in on arguments you can't understand.

    4. Re: And how does this help the people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While Christians have varying beliefs, a great many of them definitely believe in:

      The Scientific Method as a useful tool for drawing conclusions on physical phenomena
      Evolution and natural selection
      The Big Bang

      Yes, even some "fundamentalists" aren't flat-earth creationists who hate science.

    5. Re:And how does this help the people? by NMBob · · Score: 1

      How is "gravity is becoming less, because of global warming" a republican thing/ (Oops! Did I type that news out loud??)

    6. Re: And how does this help the people? by SpaceDave · · Score: 1

      Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination in the world and its official stance is that the Big Bang theory is just fine with them.

      My mother is an Anglican priest and, like most of her congregation, she accepts the Big Bang theory along with natural selection and pretty much every other established scientific theory.

      I think the perception of Christians as anti-science is largely an American thing. Not completely - we do have that type here in New Zealand too - but apparently not to the extend as in the USA.

    7. Re: And how does this help the people? by mrsurb · · Score: 1

      A Christian priest DEVELOPED the Big Bang theory.

    8. Re: And how does this help the people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That vermin is present everywhere. Fortunately, for the most part, and unlike in the US, they have no political clout whatsoever and are nothing but a target for derision.

    9. Re: And how does this help the people? by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination in the world and its official stance is that the Big Bang theory is just fine with them.

      That's irrelevant here in America, we don't care about what the rest of the world thinks. Just look at our measurement system.

      The fact is, here in America, most Christians are fundamentalist or close to it ("evangelical"), and are very much anti-science any time science conflicts with their religious beliefs.

      I think the perception of Christians as anti-science is largely an American thing.

      Probably so, since here in the US the anti-science Christians are the mainstream (among Christians). But considering how large this country is population-wise and how much power it has both militarily and economically, our anti-science Christians count a lot more than pro-science Christians in other countries.

      she accepts the Big Bang theory along with natural selection and pretty much every other established scientific theory.

      "pretty much"? Which ones do they not? You can't be "pro-science" and then pick and choose what theories you believe, it's all or nothing. If you reject one theory, you're rejecting all of science and returning to irrationality. This doesn't mean you have to believe every theory is absolutely 100% true, in fact this is wrong too, and it's possible to opine that a theory is not well-supported by the evidence (but that wouldn't be an "established scientific theory" like the theory of gravitation), and science also requires you to be willing to change your belief as soon as evidence proves something wrong or forces a theory to be revised, but you can't just say "I believe in science" and then say "but I believe that [some well-established theory] is complete bunk even though I have no evidence to disprove it other than some vague fantastical stories by bronze-age sheep herders that were passed around as oral tradition for generations before finally being written down".

    10. Re: And how does this help the people? by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Most modern American Christians would say he wasn't a true Christian and that he was working for the devil.

      In fact, a lot of American Christians don't believe Catholics to be Christians at all.

    11. Re: And how does this help the people? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      To be Christian is to be Christ like. He preached love and forgiveness. Most self-proclaimed Christians aren't Christian.

    12. Re: And how does this help the people? by inasity_rules · · Score: 1

      This. A million times this.

      --
      I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
  8. Oh no! Not again! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How much is Forbes/StartsWithABang paying Slashdot?

  9. WORKING AS INTENDED by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

    http://trenchescomic.com/comic...

  10. Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    StartsWithABang and his Forbes bullshit again. So much for new management. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    1. Re:Here we go again by sexconker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They probably have an existing contract in place that they can't just kill off without being sued.

    2. Re:Here we go again by Soulskill · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's no contract. Or any communication aside from the actual submissions. If you want different astronomy/science stories on Slashdot, you have easy recourse; submit your own!

    3. Re:Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Riiight. Then who pushed it from the firehose on to the front page?
      Because it sure as hell wasn't us!

    4. Re:Here we go again by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Plenty of people submit worthwhile things that just sit at the firehose, while plenty of shilled crap gets front paged.

      I dare you to explain how it is decided which things are front paged, including the names of the people who make the decisions.
      And I defy you to directly state that you still work for Slashdot and that advertising or other promotional deals do not affect what is posted to the front page.

    5. Re:Here we go again by Soulskill · · Score: 1

      Plenty of people submit worthwhile things that just sit at the firehose, while plenty of shilled crap gets front paged.

      Unfortunately, everybody's definition of "worthwhile things" is different. If there are specific examples you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to post my perspective on why they may or may not have been posted. I realize that submitting to Slashdot can be like screaming into the void; it's something I always wanted to change. But there are often good reasons why submissions were declined.

      Shilled stories get to the front page for a few reasons. Here's how CmdrTaco explained it to me when I joined Slashdot. The role of Slashdot is to be a filter; it whittles down the tens of thousands of articles posted every day to the 20-30 that are most relevant to the community. Most publications pump out lots of junk every day, along with a legitimately good article or two. If a shill wants to submit their best article for consideration... fine. Non-shills are preferred, of course, but more on-topic submissions in the firehose can only help the community. Editors can (and do) reject shills all the time. Even StartsWithABang only has a ~23% acceptance rate.

      I dare you to explain how it is decided which things are front paged, including the names of the people who make the decisions.
      And I defy you to directly state that you still work for Slashdot and that advertising or other promotional deals do not affect what is posted to the front page.

      I haven't worked for Slashdot since the acquisition. I can directly state that for the duration of my time there (Dec. 2007 until Jan. 2016) no advertising or promotional deals affected what was posted to the front page. (Excepting, of course, these dumb things that started a few months ago, which were straight up ad units, and labeled as such).

      The editorial staff decides what gets posted. Prior to the acquisition, it was myself, samzenpus, and timothy. Since the acquisition, it appears to be timothy and a new editor named yaelk (and occasionally whipslash, one of Slashdot's new owners).

      Stories are picked using a variety of criteria: how the community votes on it, how interesting it is, how on-topic it is, its relevance, the quality of the source, the article's timeliness, what similar material is on the page already, and a few other things. (Disclaimer: I am speaking for myself, and how I picked stories, but samzenpus and timothy operated similarly -- as CmdrTaco taught us).

      These criteria are weighed against each other. If an article is a few days old, it needs to be particularly interesting to make the front page. The more off-topic something is, the more interesting it needs to be to make the cut. How the community votes is important, but is not enough on its own. The community sometimes votes for things that are factually untrue, or are years old, or involve attacking somebody. The community sometimes votes up dupes. On the other side of things, sometimes the community just doesn't vote.

      Hope this provides some context for you.

  11. Anoying Forbes Link! by 0xG · · Score: 2

    The heck with that...

    --
    A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
  12. WTF have you been? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    The "news about the news" has been out there for the better part of a week. Did you really just hear about it?

    1. Re:WTF have you been? by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      Slashdot doesn't release "scoops", really. That's not necessarily a bad thing, although it is amusing at times to see them beaten out for tech news by CNN.com. As an aggregator that relies on posting from other sites, it's always going to lag a little.

      On the other hand, perhaps that means the Slashdot needs to stop reporting on mainstream crap and return to a more specialized set of news.

  13. Praise science! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can you imagine the quality of Yo Mama's So Fat jokes that will come out of this? You don't get that kind of entertainment without spending some cash on science.

    1. Re:Praise science! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can you imagine the quality of Yo Mama's So Fat jokes that will come out of this? You don't get that kind of entertainment without spending some cash on science.

      Totally, and that's exactly what yo momma told me last night!

    2. Re:Praise science! by fonske · · Score: 1

      Yeah, apples and trees...

  14. Hide Forbes Option? by Chmarr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can I have an option to just hide any articles with links to forbes.com ? That'd be really handy, thanks.

    1. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by MrTester · · Score: 1

      If you don't like the quality of comments here why don't you just move along?

    2. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      Actually, while it annoys me to see meta-comments about where the stories come from (like Forbes or StartsWithABang or whoever), it does seem to show a need for a forum where people can post these complaints and then perhaps show the site admins whether that is a common sentiment or not with some voting or at least discussion.

      I agree that the Forbes articles are something I do not wish to disable my ad blocker to look at and it could be a reasonable request to not accept links to sites that require Ad Block to be turned off. Of course, that does hit right to the heart of supporting ad block when Slashdot itself is Ad supported. :)

    3. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      I wrote a grease monkey user script that nuked all the bennett haselton shit from orbit.
      Should be trivial to do the same for forbes.

      (I switched machines and browsers recently - I didn't bother to bring the bennett haselton nuker with me because as far as I know his shit has stopped.)

    4. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Slashdot: new for nerds that can't write an userscript and prefer waiting for their corporate masters.
      Edited from some other post
      // ==UserScript==
      // @name No forbes articles
      // @description Remove forbes posts from Slashdot front page.
      // @include http://slashdot.org/*
      // @include http://.slashdot.org/*
      // @include https://slashdot.org/*
      // @include https://.slashdot.org/*
      // @exclude https://.slashdot.org/story/*
      // @exclude http://.slashdot.org/story/*
      // @grant none
      // ==/UserScript==

      var elements = document.getElementsByTagName('article');

      for(var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {

      if(elements[i].querySelector('a[href*="forbes.com"]')) {

      elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);

      }

      }

    5. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by curiousdave · · Score: 1

      Try searching for the topic of a forbes.com article to find the references it was based on.

    6. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

      I'm beginning to believe that Forbes is the real new owner of Slashdot, and they just bought it through a front.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    7. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If your ad blocker fails on some site, then you should file a bug with your ad blocker. Don't ruin Slashdot for everyone else that have working ad blockers or that don't mind ads.

    8. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly, this is getting old.
      All you have to do is configure your adblocker to work with forbes. Literally 3 minutes of work and you can stop bitching about the content being hosted on forbes and start bitching about people posting their own articles on slashdot.

    9. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Both of you might be interested in soylentnews.org and hackernews (news.ycombinator.com).

    10. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by tnk1 · · Score: 2

      I don't know that the ad blocker can overcome some of the things Forbes has done to deny content to those who use ad blockers.

      And to some extent, I don't necessarily blame Forbes for refusing to present content that is supported by something I am blocking, I just wish they'd have ads that I didn't need to block for the sake of mere safe browsing.

      I do think that Slashdot might reasonably be asked to not post links to sites which use that sort of brute forced tactic. I don't personally care one way or another, but it is a reasonable request. I won't read a Forbes article, and that makes me less likely to comment on it.

    11. Re:Hide Forbes Option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah but without all the weight of groupthink and corporate sponsorship.

  15. Capitalistic Toolbag by Thud457 · · Score: 1

    StartsWithABang must think Forbes is a popular science magazine.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    1. Re:Capitalistic Toolbag by psyclone · · Score: 2

      I'm sure StartsWithABang moved from Medium.com to Forbes.com for more money, and I'm still very interested in astronomy articles on Slashdot, but I refuse to read anything on Forbes. Thus we keep having these discussions about how horrible Forbes is and look for alternate links, like a parent poster graciously left us:

      http://arstechnica.com/science...

    2. Re:Capitalistic Toolbag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      StartsWithABang should start moving to Wired.com. We hate Forbes.com.

    3. Re:Capitalistic Toolbag by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      They are about to be adblock hostile too.

  16. Better non-forbes link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://phys.org/news/2016-02-thursday-einstein-gravitational.html

  17. When did this nonsense start? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This "we're announcing that we'll be announcing something soon" crap, I mean.

    The first time I was really aware of it happening was with "Ginger", that silly self-balancing scooter. Then, and every time since, the announcement has been underwhelming at best. Most of the time it's a complete waste of time - so I now let these pre-announcements go in one ear and right out the other.

    We have the Internet. If something cool is announced, we'll know about it right away. Stop wasting our time - and yours - with pre-announcements about coming announcements!

    Truly we live in the future... but, unfortunately, too often this future makes Futurama look like a prescient documentary.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:When did this nonsense start? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For some people knowing the news "right away" is not sufficient. You won't be able to ask questions at the press conference if you're not there.

    2. Re:When did this nonsense start? by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

      This is a press event that is being announced. You are not press, so you are not required to care, but plenty of people do.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    3. Re:When did this nonsense start? by radarskiy · · Score: 2

      It not that there are announcements that there are going to be announcements. It's that setting up a schedule to make an announcement so that the relevant people can be there to ask relevant questions is being treated as an announcement itself.

      Organizations like LIGO are not the problem; stenographers pretending to be journalists are the problem.

    4. Re:When did this nonsense start? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      You're on my lawn again.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  18. forbes whiners by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    not sure why i am doing that you aren't, but i have adblock plus installed and can view ad-less forbes articles just fine.

    not sure what all the fuss is about.

  19. Solar Neutrinos First by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Informative

    StartsWithABang must think Forbes is a popular science magazine.

    Well it would be nice if he got his science right then. The first astrophysical neutrinos detected came from the sun and were detected by the Homestake Experiment in the late 1960s for which a Nobel Prize was awarded. Those from SN1987a were the first neutrinos detected from a source outside the solar system.

    1. Re:Solar Neutrinos First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      +1
      The summary is poorly written. StartsWithABang hopefully meant something more like "the first signal detected from the supernova explosion of 1987".

    2. Re:Solar Neutrinos First by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      While I treat StartsWithABang's constant Slashvertising for his advert server with the disdain it deserves, I think he does actually know his astrophysics. A pity he got laid off from his paying work and needs to whore himself to Forbes to put food on the table.

      The problem with neutrino telescopy is that we don't have a neutrino-opaque material. So all our neutrino telescopes are whole-sky telescopes. The first generations of neutrino telescopes (e.g., the Homestake experiment that you refer to) had no direction sensitivity at all, but purely returned counts of neutrinos over the interval since the last purging.

      When Cherenkov detectors came in, the cone of Cherenkov radiation would give you the orientation of travel, but not the direction of travel. For example, the Super-Kamiokande detector counted a pulse of 11 neutrinos from SN1987A with an accuracy of about +/-28deg, of which the first two pointed to the LCM (or it's antipode) with an accuracy of 18deg +/-18deg and 15deg +/- 27deg (the rest of the burst was "consistent with isotropy" ; the trigger time of the photomultipliers is about 50ns, which restricts the directional accuracy).

      I can't be bothered to track down the accuracy of, say, ANTARES or ICE-CUBE ; but they'll be in the literature. On the basis that you try to half the imprecision with each new generation of equipment (otherwise it's not worthwhile building ore re-building), you'd expect precisions of around 7-10deg (one and ah half to two fist-widths at arms length), which is getting to the point of potentially being useful for pointing survey telescopes.

      So, while we knew there were neutrinos coming into the detectors before SN1987A, observers had no way of knowing whether they were from the Sun, a supernova, or backwash form an alien's anti-gravity drive. The "SK eleven" (sounds like a bank robbery gang) were the first detections that astronomers could point at and say "we think these neutrinos came from there, for these reasons".

      That's the science bit (and a little defence of StartWithAnAdvert's science, if not of his writing skills) ; for my own interest ... WTF is the current SN monitor system?

      Well, unsurprinsingly, there is a paper on Arxiv. Oh, it's just from last week!

      It is also important to determine the SN direction using the neutrino signal: the direction information can guide optical instruments toward the SN explosion and enable observation of the onset of radiation. Among the neutrino detectors operating at present, Super-Kamiokande (SK) is the only detector able to determine the SN direction using neutrino events.

      Well, I'll take their word for it.

      When the SN burst has less than 60 events, the golden warning will not be generated.

      Oh, Japanese English! sorry, "Engrish!" It must be authentic!

      The pointing accuracy estimated by the e nsemble study is found to be 3.1 â¼ 3.8â--¦ (4.3 â¼5.9â--¦) at 68.2% coverage for the Wilson (NK1) model at 10 kpc, where the range covers various neutrino oscillation scenarios.

      Well bugger me! My wild-arsed guess above wasn't too bad!

      And the final question ... how do I receive neutrino burst alerts? That is something I'm working on finding the answer to. but I deserve a pint!

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    3. Re:Solar Neutrinos First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (where are the physicists in this discussions when it was aplenty of them and they were all quite alive?)

  20. Misread title by mattventura · · Score: 2

    I thought I would be able to manipulate gravity using LEGO, but was quickly disappointed.

    1. Re:Misread title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you aren't manipulating gravity with LEGO, you aren't using enough of them.

    2. Re:Misread title by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Same here. I thought "LEGO is doing what???" It's like clickbait!

    3. Re:Misread title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless your bricks have zero mass, energy, momentum, and pressure... every time you move them around you are manipulating gravity.

    4. Re:Misread title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I TOTALLY GET IT, it's funny because "LIGO" is a lot like "LEGO"

      LOOOOOOOOLOLOLOLOL THAT'S A REALL FUNNY JOKE!!!! =+)))))

      Fucking moron.

  21. Forbes.com must die by neo-mkrey · · Score: 1

    That is all.

  22. Forbes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously? The only link about this you could find was from Forbes? No thanks.

  23. Here's an explainer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Prior to the age of people being functionally retarded by sh!t ezines like Forbes, we called it an "explanation"

  24. non-Forbes link by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Informative

    LIGO Scientists Will Make Gravitational Waves Announcement Thursday

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  25. Gravity is a myth; by Harold+Halloway · · Score: 1

    The Earth sucks.

  26. Nice. However... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The big news would have been if LIGO, after its latest upgrade, still were unable to detect gravitational waves. That would have been potentially huge, by virtue of the fact that it would have been unable to verify a fundamental prediction of general relativity. If and when confirmed, this will be nice, it will open new vistas in astronomy - but it is a thoroughly expected event.

  27. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  28. Let The Murph Count Begin by Prince+Vegeta+SSJ4 · · Score: 1

    Murph Count

  29. Here's an explainer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is that anything like Dub'ya being the decider?

  30. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  31. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  32. Link to announcement by XXongo · · Score: 4, Informative

    The actual LIGO Media Advisory is here: http://www.ligo.org/news/media... (with a bunch of links to background info)

  33. Ginger waves by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    Dean Kamen will announce the new levitating Segway. It's going to change the urban landscape forever.

    Actually it turns out they have identified a concentrated emitter of Gravity waves. Yo Momma. She so fat.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  34. Idiotic announcement of announcement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you have to announce something, just do it when you are ready,don't fucking announce that you are going to announce on day X.
    Same for NASA and their Mars announcements on announcements.

  35. Thank Kip by drerwk · · Score: 1

    hope he get a Nobel.

  36. Why they have to delay the announcement till Thurs by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    The real announcement is that they studying gravity waves using a device intended to electromagnetically reduce the weight of a suspended object. IN the process they discovered a strange mold that normally takes 1 year to grow a layer had completely covered their apparatus overnight. They built a larger machine and crawled inside of it with a tank of oxygen and found themselves at next thursday. Thus they can't actually make the announcement until time catches up with them. They could go back in time to announce it now but then their current selves might got to the same meeting and this might change the time line destroying the future Thursday. So they have to wait till time catches up to them. Fortunately Aaron started a failsafe before he left so no worries.

    1. gravity waves
    2. time travel
    3. ?????
    4. Primer

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  37. Coffee through my nose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just snorted so hard reading that my coffee went through my nose.

  38. Re:Why they have to delay the announcement till Th by Hussman32 · · Score: 1

    If you ditch work this afternoon, and promise to do the few small things I ask you; I will in return show you the most important thing that any living organism has ever witnessed.

    --
    "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
  39. Why wasn't I notified?! by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    LIGO Will Make Gravitational Waves Announcement on Thursday

    This is all so sudden! They should have pre-announced this pre-announcement. I mean, officially.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Why wasn't I notified?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, it's like a ripple of repeated announcements. A wave if you will.

  40. having no knowledge in the field whatsover by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    would a localised gravity tsunami slow the speed of light?

  41. Greg Hodowanec was wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And his gravity wave detector was bogus? Say it aint so! ;)

    http://amasci.com/freenrg/grav3.html

  42. Any bets on the polarization of the waves? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll risk my money on stretch and shrink along the propagation axis. But I want odds.

    1. Re: Any bets on the polarization of the waves? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My Oakley sunglasses are polarized but seem to have negligible impact on gravity

  43. Graviton by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    The gravitational waves are also the long-sought graviton, right?

    1. Re:Graviton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately no, in the same way that the discovery of electromagnetic waves was distinct and a long way short of discovery of photons.

    2. Re:Graviton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are theories of gravity that have gravitons (typical ones treat it as a massless spin-2 boson), some of which work well in limited settings, but none of which successfully reproduce General Relativity. In particular, they practically lead to multiple loops of gravitons on Feynman diagrams, and those do not vanish under powerset renormalization (which is how one gets rid of multiple loops of electrons, for example).

      General Relativity is a classical rather than quantum field theory; there are no particles mediating gravitation's effects on matter.

      Gravitational waves are a prediction from the early days of General Relativity (Einstein wrote down the quadrupole equation for them in 1916) and there is ample indirect evidence for an exact match between that prediction and observation, notably from the Hulse-Taylor pulsar (the characterization of which led to a Nobel prize award), whose electromagnetic emissions strongly suggest an enormous loss of momentum from the binary system, yet that momentum is not being shed as ordinary matter (it's not photons; we'd see them -- it's not neutrinos or other particles, we'd see the effects on nearby gas and dust). By "enormous", the ongoing power loss is about 2% of that of the output of our sun.

      The inspiralling binary pair about to be described tomorrow has lost about two solar masses worth of mass-energy recently.

      In General Relativity, there's a generalized conservation of mass-energy-momentum. Ordinary matter can donate energy to the gravitational field "here", and the gravitational field can release that donated energy as momentum imparted to particles "there". This is mediated by gravitational waves.

      Locally we're immersed in a noisy sea of gravitational waves sourced from all sorts of moving masses near to us and at various distances. The waves have different frequencies and amplitudes which makes detection tricky, much like in a noisy room or airplane when you're struggling to hear one particular voice out of many. Advanced LIGO is sensitive to frequencies and amplitudes from binary pulsars, and when we spot an inspiralling binary pulsar from how its electromagnetic emissions change over time, LIGO looks for gravitational waves in a narrow frequency and amplitude band.

      The engineering for LIGO involved quantum mechanics in describing the laser/mirror/detector systems. Semiclassical gravity, a theory in which the dynamic curved background of spacetime is fixed to a static (and typically flatter) background, with additional virtual particles doing the work of carrying *changes* in curvature. Changes in curvature are what gravitational waves propagate. There are paradigms of semiclassical gravity that have "gravitons", but they are very different from the field content in the theories of gravitation I mentioned above, mainly because completely reproducing General Relativity is a key goal of semiclassical gravity; the "gravitons" in semiclassical gravity (and thus in any discussion concerning LIGO) have no loops in Feynman diagrams.

      If gravitational waves are *not* detected by Advanced LIGO *or* eLISA, then there are some graviton theories which differ from General Relativity that may become interesting. If gravitational waves *are* detected, however, those theories will finally be proven to be unphysical.

  44. forbes, too bad by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

    One of the LIGO programs is only 40 miles away, with a lot of luck the local newspaper might cover it.

  45. LEGO-to-GravityTransducer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought I would be able to manipulate gravity using LEGO, but was quickly disappointed.

    Yep, just use the LEGO-to-GravityTransducer interface and you're golden.

  46. Sunrise. by jondeanmack · · Score: 0

    "LIGO Will Make Gravitational Waves Announcement on Thursday", And the Sun will rise again the next day. Yawn.

  47. Spam spam spam lovely spam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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  48. Energy. by jondeanmack · · Score: 0

    If they do exist it will take energy to cause a wave, of which no one except one will have once the stars have extinguished etcetera.

    1. Re:Energy. by jondeanmack · · Score: 0

      That wasn't a threat. Just science.

  49. Shades of Michelson–Morley by christopher.karl.joh · · Score: 1

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...–Morley_experiment