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It's Official: LIGO Scientists Make First-Ever Observation of Gravity Waves (economist.com)

Posted by timothy on from the somebody's-gettin'-a-nobel dept.

A few days ago, we posted reports that a major finding -- the discovery of the long-predicted gravity waves -- was expected to be formally announced today, and reader universe520 is the first to note this coverage in the Economist : It is 1.3 billion years after two black holes merged and sent out gravitational waves. On Earth in September 2015, the faintest slice of those waves was caught. That slice, called GW150914 and announced to the world on February 11th, is the first gravitational wave to be detected directly by human scientists. It is a triumph that has been a century in the making, opening a new window onto the universe and giving researchers a means to peer at hitherto inaccessible happenings, perhaps as far back in time as the Big Bang. Reader DudeTheMath adds: NPR has a nice write-up of the newly-published results: "[R]esearchers say they have detected rumblings from that cataclysmic collision as ripples in the very fabric of space-time itself. The discovery comes a century after Albert Einstein first predicted such ripples should exist. ... The signal in the detector matches well with what's predicted by Einstein's original theory, according to [Saul] Teukolsky [of Cornell], who was briefed on the results." Update: 02/11 18:08 GMT by T : Worth reading: this letter, inspirational and informative, from MIT president L. Rafael Reif, about the discovery. (Hat tip to Brian Kulak.)

304 of 460 comments (clear)

  1. Cool! by XXongo · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Cool!

    Nobody actually ever thought that gravity waves wouldn't exist-- it's pretty much impossible to come up with a version of gravity that doesn't include waves.

    But it's amazing that we can actually detect it.

    1. Re:Cool! by bondsbw · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't it have been conceivable, assuming some flaw in the theory of relativity, for gravitational effects to occur instantaneously across vast distances instead of limited by the speed of light (and thus causing propagation in the form of waves)? Or they could have discovered that the waves are different from theoretical predictions in some other way.

      --
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    2. Re:Cool! by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No.

    3. Re:Cool! by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wouldn't it have been conceivable, assuming some flaw in the theory of relativity

      Yes, absolutely.

      The thing here is that to date Einstein has a perfect track record. Which is pretty remarkable.

      To date, everything they've ever tested says that the theory of relativity, as far as we've been able to investigate, hasn't shown any cracks.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:Cool! by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      I didn't think they existed. After all I can't see them. Unless I can put it in my pocket I don't believe it exists.

    5. Re:Cool! by joe_frisch · · Score: 3, Informative

      Its possible to formulate theories of gravity that don't have gravity waves, but there was already strong evidence of their existence from measurements of the orbit decay of neutron star binaries.

      Direct detection was fantastic - but it confirmed what was already believed to be extremely likely.

    6. Re:Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Yes. Einstein theorized that spacetime is curved around objects, and so an object, once settled, should have this curvature around it rather than a wave to project. That said, it's like ideal gas laws or my economic theories of wealth: everything *approaches* a certain state, but pushing a piston down into a 1L bottle of gas doesn't instantly make tho whole volume obey ideal gas. You get an average, with high pressure at the point you inserted the force, which then reduces as it compresses stuff further down--a wave. The whole universe taking its time adjusting to a shift in pressure on the spacetime fabric would be a wave as well.

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    7. Re:Cool! by Immerman · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, except for the niggling one where it demands a completely different vacuum energy level than the similarly well-tested theories of Quantum Mechanics.

      It's an odd situation - we have two well-tested and widely accepted theories, neither of which show any significant cracks, but which are utterly incompatible with each other.

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      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    8. Re:Cool! by bondsbw · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Absolutely. My point was not so much about refuting relativity completely, but observing (at scales far beyond our normal ability to detect) data that suggests that relativity as we know it is an incomplete theory. Which has already happened, mind you, given that relativity did not at the time fully describe quantum physics and other phenomena.

      But discovering that gravity waves didn't follow the pattern might have made LIGO a modern Michelson-Morley experiment, leading to completely new physics, just as relativity was a better description of gravitation and spacetime than Newtonian physics.

      --
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    9. Re:Cool! by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Informative

      Finding them means we can start developing better instruments. Primordial gravity waves are our best shot at understanding the inflationary epoch and understanding the Big Bang itself. This is one of physic's greatest triumphs.

      And, of course, it confirms once again that Einstein remains one of the titans of human thought.

      --
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    10. Re: Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      This has happened in science before, with contradictions between Newton and Maxwell. The whole special relativity thing was the reconciliation.

    11. Re:Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Have you considered that the deviation of GR may be only quantitative, not qualitative? Detecting a wave is the first step to measuring it, and measuring is the first step to verification.

    12. Re:Cool! by buchner.johannes · · Score: 4, Informative

      To date, everything they've ever tested says that the theory of relativity, as far as we've been able to investigate, hasn't shown any cracks.

      That's not quite right.

      - GR breaks down when you go to quantum levels
      - GR does not fully describe black holes (particularly their horizon and the singularity)
      - GR is incomplete with regards to explaining the expansion of the universe (the discrepancy is called Dark Energy)

      --
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    13. Re:Cool! by cbeaudry · · Score: 1

      Say what?

    14. Re:Cool! by ChronoReverse · · Score: 1

      Would be pretty much impossible since any sort of instantaneous action at a distance implies breaking cause and effect. The speed of light isn't so much the speed limit of light but rather the speed of "causality".

    15. Re:Cool! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      They have been trying to detect GW's for roughly half a century, making instruments gradually ever sensitive when nothing found. Was their magnitude so uncertain that they had no idea how sensitive the detector had to be to detect them?

      If it's nearly a guaranteed result, as you implied, then why the huge uncertainty over the sensitivity needed? Or did the early trials merely hope the models were wrong when trying to detect results beyond what the tech of the day could handle relative to the (faint) magnitude the models suggested?

      For example, why build a detector that is only sensitive to waves of 100 units or larger if the models say the actual waves should only be 2 units of size? You wouldn't build the 100 unit-size detector unless you had a decent reason to believe the models could be wrong. But I've never seen that assumption stated in the write-ups over the years they've been building all these detectors.

      --
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    16. Re:Cool! by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Informative

      If it were possible, you could use gravity for FTL communication, possibly even allowing you to violate causality.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    17. Re:Cool! by Immerman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, no, this is a very important result. We've been looking for gravity waves for years, and until now had been unable to detect them despite looking at sources that we should have been able to detect. This detection essentially closes an "uncertainty gap" in the theory - think of it like replacing "Here there be Dragons" on an old map with, "Nothing but open ocean here". It doesn't really change much, unless you happen to want to travel across the previously unknown area.

      In addition, the article doesn't mention it, but by comparing the measured spatial distortions with he predicted values we open the door on the study of why the waves aren't as strong as predicted. Is there a flaw in the machine, or some hither-to unpredicted attenuation factor? The latter could potentially be every bit as earth-shattering as when the study of black-boy radiation revealed Quantum Mechanics.

      It is in looking for confirmation of the predictions in current theory that both confirm that theory, and occasionally expose its flaws, which lays the groundwork for new theories. It may not be as exciting or glamorous as discovering something unexpected and new, but it's the same exact search that does both, and it's largely the luck of the draw as to whether the previously unexplored nook you chose to investigate reveals anything new. Its primarily through the exhaustive search of such nooks that we discover the unexpected phenomena that allows further theoretical growth. And in that pursuit "nothing unexpected here" is vitally important, as it allows future researchers to concentrate their attention elsewhere. Not to mention, it develops the early stages of the technologies that eventually allow us to harness the phenomena for productive uses.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    18. Re:Cool! by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 4, Funny

      I look forward to the day when I can tell Comcast "sorry, I'm switching to gravity."

      --
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    19. Re:Cool! by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It still follows basic thermodynamics once you break it down.
      No, it does not.
      Neither quantum mechanics nor the relativity theory have anything to do with thermo dynamics, basic or not.

      --
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    20. Re:Cool! by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 2

      I didn't think they existed. After all I can't see them. Unless I can put it in my pocket I don't believe it exists.

      So you don't believe in the sun as you are unable to put it in your pocket?

      --
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    21. Re:Cool! by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Which is precisely why this is such a non-important result. You don't learn much about the universe by demonstrating something everyone already knew is true.

      You seem to have a funny sense of what constitutes "true".

      Nobody "knew" gravitional waves were real until they got measured. They believed in it, had convinced themselves of it, but they sure as fuck didn't "know" it. If fit the theory, but it wasn't a fact.

      What you do is confirm your theoretical model with more evidence. That's what they've done here.

      It would be much, MUCH more interesting if it didn't work.

      So, basically you're sitting around hoping for a miracle to occur so someone can then look for a new theory?

      Sure, that would be much more interesting, but it would pretty much assume the universe is just making up shit as it goes ... do we have any evidence of that happening?

      Why the hell would proving a 100 year old theoretical prediction NOT be useful or important? Because you were hoping for fucking unicorns?

      Do you think scientists should building unicorn detectors just in case something happens in the universe we can't explain? That's not science, that's voodoo.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    22. Re:Cool! by mbkennel · · Score: 1

      "why the huge uncertainty over the sensitivity needed"

      Because of the huge uncertainty over the strength and frequency of extraordinarily exotic astrophysical circumstances which would make gravitational waves identifiable and detectable experimentally.

      It's like saying you're going to take a picture of the camouflaged panther with neutrinos. You think you know how neutrinos work, but you don't know how many of those panthers are there.

    23. Re:Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I pay attention to how the inside of my head works. Extreme introspection. I'm kind of obsessed with knowledge, learning, and optimization, so it's become a sort of nervous tick.

      The brain is an intuitive tool: you can pick it up and use it to reasonable effect without learning how. As with most intuitive tools, you can use it to *great* effect if you have better understanding of technique. This is why some people have shitty handwriting, and others are scribbling out professional-grade calligraphy just by using a slant pen: continuous cycles of practicing, of examining the results, and of recognizing and deliberately correcting your mistakes leads to picking up a slant pen and writing a thousand-dollar wedding invitation.

      I'm the guy who learned to make wedding invitations while everyone else was learning to write barely-legible cursive.

      The systems simulator is just my own constant tool: whenever I approach a problem, I simulate it. If I'm playing a video game, I'm looking at the sprites on the screen in terms of their direction and speed of travel, and accounting for any known behaviors: I see where things *will* be *simultaneously*, instead of just their current position, direction, speed, and maybe path. I instantly know if things will intersect. The same goes for real-world physics, although that domain is more complex *and* has variables I can't always measure, as well as many I don't often interact with and can't readily project. I do the same in economics, loosely correlating changes with the pressures they put on other changes and shifting the whole system at once. I manipulate data structures in my head when coding, essentially emulating an abstract representation of a computer processor.

      Some of those are more or less abstract, and more or less accurate. I'm *very* good with video games--no surprise there. Real-world physics has the stated problems: don't know all variables, haven't observed every aspect in great detail; I can catch a ball for the same reason you can, but I can't fire a sniper rifle because I need a *lot* of time to (poorly) simulate wind resistance against a bullet. Economics is actually a pretty simple system, as long as you're dealing with billions of people and not dozens. Computer programs are like economics: analyzing the *whole* program is hard, and you have to do it in pieces with propagating effects--this is generally a good strategy.

      Einstein was a scientist, yet he acted like a philosopher: he sat, thought, made a bunch of shit up, and somehow turned out right. He wasn't pulling experiments in a research lab; people are so amazed by Einstein partly because nearly everything he declared as truth--stuff he was *right* about--was impossible to test in his time. We're only now getting the equipment and the opportunity to vaguely identify that Einstein *might* have been correct, and that evidence exists which is fully explained by his theories, but not necessarily which would lead us to synthesize those same theories without a nudge in the right direction. Where do you think he got it from?

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    24. Re:Cool! by sycodon · · Score: 1

      +1 for Amusement.

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    25. Re:Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      BO-BO-BO

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    26. Re:Cool! by sycodon · · Score: 1

      Computer generated?

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      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    27. Re:Cool! by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      According to all the religions I know, their prophets had a perfect life and all what they did/said was wise, accurate and useful even thousands of years later. Perhaps these persons were really wise and delivered perfection each single second of their lives. On the other hand, it might also be possible that people in charge of telling you all these marvellous miracles (because you know about all this through middle-men) decided to tell you a version which was more beneficial to them.

      Logically, the aforementioned ideas are only applicable in cases where you cannot prove/dismiss by your own what you are told. For example: you can be sure that f = m *a because there are ways to confirm it. Confirming/dismissing something like gravity waves, the exact meaning/applicability of certain not-too-informative picture or further impossible-to-be-empirically-validated issues is a completely different story.

      --
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    28. Re:Cool! by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "I suspect Einstein had a version of my own internal simulator, one he put to use more effectively than I. Given a strong grasp of physics in that era, he could have readily generated new theories based on a few seconds of examining a behavior in his head--a behavior which would be perfectly in line with reality, even if he didn't understand it--and start working out the mechanics."

      This is exactly what I think. I sit here and look at various systems, supposedly unrelated to most people, and suddenly I see a relationship between them. This is how I came to the conclusion that light isn't a requirement for photosynthesis (I looked at the system as another energy generation system, noted it's a solar system, and figured out other things like sending power down the molecular connections to other systems,) just the appropriate energy exposure via another means would do the trick. Funnily enough, after a few years, I find out that others have had this thought, and have PROVEN IT, a couple of years before I could figure out the proper experiment to even begin an attempt at proving such a thing, let alone even thought of such an experiment.

      Never underestimate the power of ones internal gut feeling/intuition. It has led to more unexpected turn-arounds in history than you can imagine.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    29. Re:Cool! by Kythe · · Score: 2

      I can also think of a few phenomena that this new sensing capability will really help to clear up. For example: when gamma ray bursts were first announced, we only knew that they were exceedingly powerful, and there were multiple possible explanations, including merging black holes.

      With advanced LIGO, we might have been able to rule in or out that latter possibility (there are still unknowns that aLIGO could help us clear up).

      There's more here than confirming what was already strongly suspected. This is the one space telescope that can see black holes and back to the Big Bang--things that no electromagnetic sensing system can allow us to observe.

      --

      Kythe
    30. Re:Cool! by Kythe · · Score: 1

      I would love to see a bona-fide gravity telescope created, complete with sensors using ultra-precise atomic clocks as "pixels" and some sort of gravity wave focusing mechanism.

      --

      Kythe
    31. Re:Cool! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

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

      ??

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    32. Re:Cool! by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Hmm... Didn't Einstein say that God doesn't play dice on the subject of quantum entanglement? Carroll, Greene, and Suskind all seem rather certain that he was mistaken. I don't recall how they demonstrated it (and it didn't actually have anything to do with cats) but I'm pretty sure they claim to have managed to prove the uncertainty principle.

      I don't remember everything but I think they used a couple of boxes and a pair of gloves to demonstrate the principles and then went on to describe the testing mechanism. Alas, I watch such for entertainment and not for education so I didn't take notes or anything.

      However, I'm damned near certain they authoritatively stated that he was mistaken which is why I sort of remember it. It's not often that the three state things authoritatively and usually they couch things like, "If the Standard Model is correct then..." Now, I don't know if that was in anything he published or whatnot but I do know the quote is attributed to him. If the three scientists are correct then I'm not sure how that counts against towards his track record for you.

      --
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    33. Re:Cool! by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      I didn't think they existed. After all I can't see them. Unless I can put it in my pocket I don't believe it exists.

      Here's a pocket black hole.

      Put it in your pocket.

      (steps back as implosion occurs)

      There!

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    34. Re:Cool! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      And the dark energy one.

    35. Re:Cool! by lhowaf · · Score: 2

      Wow, I bet you can do things few others can manage - like catching a ball.

    36. Re:Cool! by jtalle · · Score: 1

      Well, if it's energy waves, it can be used to communicate. I've seen that postulated in at least two SF stories. How long will it be until the first GW phone call with nothing but heavy breathing? Or the first GW phishing email?

    37. Re:Cool! by Khashishi · · Score: 1

      It'd have to be a pretty damned big flaw.

    38. Re: Cool! by xTantrum · · Score: 1

      Exactly. I forget the program i was watching but it spoke how the theory unravelled as well at really large scales. I've forgotten the type of star mentioned. The point is einstein did a great job, no question. However, scientific theories are only good until a more refined one comes along.

      --
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    39. Re: Cool! by dothasmurfysmurf · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or houses, or cars, or trees, or manhole covers, or other people... Lots of things don't fit in pockets ;-)

    40. Re:Cool! by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      I'm with you on what you said. We should be skeptical of existing theories, but ultimately if we're changing theories all the time, we're not making progress. We should be trying to increase the things are are "almost certain" about.

      On the other hand, I admit it would be nice to find out that we could do something like, exceed the speed of light in a vacuum through some new loophole. Because right now, we're starting to bump up against certain limits that are putting the greater balance of the universe outside of the reach of humanity forever. I may be greedy, considering the size of our galaxy and local group, but it seems sad that if we do survive long enough (somehow), that we might actually see most of the galaxies outside our supercluster fade to black.

      That's not a good reason to hope for uncertainty, and I'm extremely unlikely to live long enough for it to even be begin to be an issue, but I suppose people want a universe that has some mystery left, or something out of left field that makes something silly like magic possible.

    41. Re:Cool! by TuringTest · · Score: 2

      If it were possible, you could use gravity for FTL communication, possibly even allowing you to violate causality.

      What makes you think that this make it inconceivable? I wouldn't find it any more strange than the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, and that one has many supporters.

      A lack of causality would mean that our perception of causes and effects is just the biased way we see the world, as a projection of a small subset of events (those with a direct causality relation) within a much more complex reality, where events can exist in a sequence without a direct causation.

      In fact I would argue that many SF works about time-travel have conceived exactly that. The fact that it has a small chance to be true doesn't mean that we can't conceive it.

      --
      Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
    42. Re:Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      More to the point, I know how people are capable of catching a ball. Have you ever wondered why you can just look at something, see it moving, step to where it's going to be, and grab it? How about throwing a rock and hitting it, even though the impact point is 20 feet away and it'll take a second to get there, with both objects moving? Don't you need some serious algebra to work that out?

      I not only know why, but I know how to leverage the same facilities to do other things. Hell, I know why a few weeks of therapy is more than twice as effective as drugs at long-term curing of severe depression. I know why Ben Pridmore can memorize the order of 27 decks of cards in 3 minutes. I know why I was always better at math than my classmates.

      You, on the other hand, seem to be focused on small outcomes. Someone explains an efficient process of planning and architecture to you and you go, "... oh. The pieces all make sense. I knew all this shit already!", even though you didn't. You knew about the pieces, but not about how to assemble them, or how to leverage them to accomplish things well beyond what you'd have thought your level of skill could accomplish. It's a common behavior in human thought processes; people are often not introspective, reflective, or creative.

      Now tell me what creativity is.

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    43. Re:Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh stop this nonsense. Causality being broken with FTL speeds is one of the most annoying and most wrong thing ever when it comes to FTL.

      FTL means you will just get there faster and, relative to it, in negative time.
      See that star out there? See if you went to it at FTL speeds, want to know what happens?
      When you arrive, the local time of that star will be the time you seen it + your travel time.
      NO CAUSALITY BROKEN. It has always been like this outside of idiots misunderstanding physics and spreading stupid time-travel crap.

      This is also why silly things like long-distance sensors in sci-fi wouldn't work either because light is still based on photons.
      The distances inside a ship are extremely unlikely to be capable of fitting a sensor to detect a ship using gravitational waves either, so that is out of the equation.
      The ship would need to be the size of the moon to be able to use triangulation to locate anything with any reasonable accuracy.
      Mind you, if you just wanted to know roughly where something was in relation to you, I guess you could afford to make it smaller.
      If all you needed to know was "huge warping of space coming towards us from the back captain!", that'd work.

    44. Re: Cool! by ian_billyboy_morris · · Score: 1

      Yea, but even it still doesn't understand economics.

    45. Re:Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Einstein didn't own a computer, you anesthetized testicle.

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    46. Re:Cool! by lhowaf · · Score: 1

      I don't know what is creativity...but I can still sometimes catch the ball.

    47. Re: Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      The ones I first worked out on my own were that all whole numbers were the result of the sum of a single set of only primes raised to powers (2^3 + 5 + 11^2) or the *product* of a single set of primes raised to powers (2 * 3^2 * 7). Then some teacher told me there was no chain rule for integration, and I found the chain rule essentially a mental mathematics strategy for solving complex derivatives, so I took the next 40 minutes to analyze several integration exercises and produced integration by parts (which we learned about a week later--what a waste of time). Simple stuff.

      My favorite one was physics tensile problems. I *hated* tensile problems. To solve a tensile problem, we had to carry out a seven-step algorithm in which we'd break down each angle into its horizontal and vertical component vectors, then solve the right triangle for each, and combine the solution's horizontal and vertical vectors, solving for the hypotenuse.

      In that picture, consider T1 and T2 as the length of those sides (they're the tension on each rope or whatnot they represent). M is the hanging mass. As it turns out, you can get a triangle by placing a line of length M between the top left point (where angle Theta is) and the bottom right vertex (where T2 meets the vertical wall); or by moving T2 *without rotating it* such that any of its vertexes connects to any of T1's vertexes, and then connecting the remaining two with a line of length M. I recognized this largely by mathematical result.

      Pick a set. You'll either end up with two sides and an angle or two angles and a side. You can now glance at this diagram, apply the Law of Cosines, and solve it in one step. When I showed my physics teacher, he said he didn't see any mathematical reason that would work, although it *did* work on every problem we tried. Should have asked the Asian chick who took every form of math there was when she went to college; my teacher was largely a materials science type of guy.

      Obviously, this one's my favorite because it's a *much* simpler way to tackle an irritatingly tedious problem *and* my academic superiors could never understand why it worked. That means I didn't waste my time figuring out some mathematical trick I could have found by flipping a dozen pages ahead in the book. As far as I know, this is a known technique, but *very* few sources mention using either the law of sines or the law of cosines to solve tension triangles.

      This is why math was always fun for me. I reflected a lot on how it all fit together.

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    48. Re:Cool! by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Does it bother you when people call it like it is and don't listen to goobers or their sock puppets?
      FTL violates causality.

    49. Re: Cool! by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or houses, or cars, or trees, or manhole covers, or other people... Lots of things don't fit in pockets ;-)

      does he actually believe his own pockets exist as he would not be able to put them in side themselves.

      --
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    50. Re:Cool! by bondsbw · · Score: 1

      any sort of instantaneous action at a distance implies breaking cause and effect

      This is an assumption, but it has never been observed and relies on our interpretation of relativity being correct. If observations cause us to question the interpretation, they would also cause us to questions assumptions.

      --
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    51. Re:Cool! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

      I was bothered about the AC slamming angel'o'sphere for no reason, as if a person being a programmer prevents them from having any knowledge of science. It was a silly comment of the AC. I am not sure where you come from with goobers and sock puppets, or why you think FTL and causality have anything to do with Quantum Mechanics or Relativity in reference to Thermodynamics?

      If you are under the impression that I am a sock puppet, I assure you, this is my only /. account.

      --
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    52. Re: Cool! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I understand that, but I've never seen an article about past attempts with statements similar to, "most existing theories on gravity say we shouldn't expect to detect gravity waves with [current gizmo] because it's not sensitive enough, but part of the purpose of [current gizmo] is to verify this expectation."

      --
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    53. Re:Cool! by avandesande · · Score: 1

      When a perturbation has some energy value and it can be anywhere at once, than it contains an infinite amount of energy. Although relativity and C seem counter-intuitive it is the only thing that makes sense.

      --
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    54. Re: Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      On the other hand, I look forward to the day Gravity drops a giant space rock on comcast.

    55. Re:Cool! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Okay, there was some uncertainty over the what phenomena could cause gravity waves, but that still creates mostly the same in issue on the generation side.

      Colliding black holes is about as big as you can get. There's nothing known that's more massive, except "collective" objects like galaxies and dust clouds.

      Those things are either too diffuse to generate GW's, above noise, or would create them as such a low frequency to be beyond the frequency range of current detectors.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    56. Re:Cool! by lgw · · Score: 2

      I think you meant to say "Inconceivable? You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means".

      Many fictional things are "conceivable", but in terms of real science, no one is going to take a casual "general relativity is totally broken" proposal seriously. General relativity has made more and better predictions (and more unexpected predictions) than just about anything. You can doubt any theory, but the more one has proven itself, the higher the bar to claim "but maybe it's totally wrong".

      Every theory "might be wrong", but that's not a useful observation - it helps no one to point that out, much like complaining about the weather. "This might be true instead" is useful, but you have to explain everything the current theory is correct about too.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    57. Re: Cool! by neilo_1701D · · Score: 1

      Hey! I haven't had a ComCast outage for at least a week! They must be getting better... Either that, or @comcastcares actually makes things better...

    58. Re:Cool! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      There's no way we're going to focus gravity waves any time soon. But (I think) you could build a gravity wave interferometer. LIGO effectively IS sort of a gravity wave interferometer right now, with the baseline between the two sites giving it the ability to determine the rough direction to the sources. If you wanted to build up an image you'd need a lot of LIGOs, but it would be possible. And awesome.

    59. Re:Cool! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      Since Newton we've made a variety of observations that we're fairly sure imply gravity propagates at a finite speed. If that's true, it's very difficult to construct a theory that doesn't include waves. Realistic MOND theories (i.e. more than just "GR is wrong.") include gravity waves, although they might disagree with relativity about how easy they are to detect.

    60. Re:Cool! by lgw · · Score: 1

      Oh stop this nonsense. Causality being broken with FTL speeds is one of the most annoying and most wrong thing ever when it comes to FTL.

      Causality breaking is subtle. For a simple one-way trip, in your reference frame, nothing will seem wrong, but from another reference frame you may appear to go back in time. If you have two pairs of ansibles (FTL telephones), each pair moving relative to the other, it's possible to send a message round trip (FTL to your connection, normal space to another endpoint, FTL to its connection, back to you) in such a way that you receive it before you send it.

      The circumstances needed to break causality are somewhat contrived, but it's possible.

      This is also why silly things like long-distance sensors in sci-fi wouldn't work either because light is still based on photons.

      So a warp drive moving a whole ship FTL is somehow more believable than some sort of wave or particle that travels FTL and can be bounced off things in front of you? I find tachyons easier to believe than warp drives, myself (much as I hated particle-of-the-week Trek episodes)

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    61. Re: Cool! by apoc.famine · · Score: 1

      Then does nothing exist because there are no pockets, or does everything exist because there are no pockets?

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    62. Re:Cool! by ath1901 · · Score: 1

      - GR breaks down when you go to quantum levels

      Could you be more specific? There are plenty of successful marriages of GR and QM. For example quantum field theories such as QED, QCD etc.

      - GR does not fully describe black holes (particularly their horizon and the singularity)

      No one has seen the event horizon or the inside of a black hole so we don't know if the GR predictions matches reality or not. (And, if GR is correct, nothing beyond the horizon can be studied). The things we have checked (like gravitational waves) matches.

      - GR is incomplete with regards to explaining the expansion of the universe (the discrepancy is called Dark Energy)

      Dark Energy is a proposed solution to make the observations match the predictions. So, if dark energy is found there is no conflict with GR. Calling GR incomplete is a bit unfair since it isn't a theory of everything (and isn't supposed to be), just a theory of the interaction between matter/energy and spacetime. It makes no predictions of how much or which type of matter should exist.

      I'd say the original statement holds. No cracks have been found yet.

    63. Re:Cool! by Lotana · · Score: 2

      Causality breaking is subtle. For a simple one-way trip, in your reference frame, nothing will seem wrong, but from another reference frame you may appear to go back in time. If you have two pairs of ansibles (FTL telephones), each pair moving relative to the other, it's possible to send a message round trip (FTL to your connection, normal space to another endpoint, FTL to its connection, back to you) in such a way that you receive it before you send it.

      Sorry, my English is terrible, so I don't quite get it.

      An example would be good. Let us say that Alice is communicating with Bob who is on a planet 12 light years away with messages that travel at 4*c speed. All the while Alice is travelling towards it at 3*c.

      I am not sure how this "FTL to your connection, normal space to another endpoint, FTL to its connection, back to you" would end up reaching Alice before she sends the message.

    64. Re:Cool! by Lotana · · Score: 2

      I have just tried reading the Tachyonic antitelephone wikipedia page and I am even more confused! Particularly since it heavily uses Lorentz transformation, which is also way over my head...

      Would anyone please explain in simpler terms without the maths involved? Or is it one of these areas that just can't be explained without it?

    65. Re:Cool! by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      And it's not like it's *wrong* in these regimes. It's just *undefined* - you're getting an indeterminate value - 0/0 or infinity/infinity or 0 times infinity or such. It means you need a different set of principles to determine the actual value and GR simply doesn't solve these cases.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    66. Re:Cool! by delt0r · · Score: 1

      Special relativity tells us if you can exceed the speed of light in at least 2 different frames of reference, you can communicate or travel to your own past. It is that simple. If you want to travel faster than light you *must* either lose casualty or relativity. Pick one.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    67. Re:Cool! by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      Until it enters consumer space.

      You had no means to check special relativity at home 50 years ago. Today, grab a GPS chip and pick its firmware apart at will.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    68. Re:Cool! by delt0r · · Score: 1

      In particular a very heavy and *compact* pair of objects such that light cannot escape the surface. aka the very definition of a BLACK HOLE.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    69. Re:Cool! by dsmatthews9379 · · Score: 1

      It will be really amazing when they actually manage to do it twice. No seriously, the frequency of detected events is very important, so they need to collect an entire series of detections to have useful data.

    70. Re:Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm in the process of learning General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory, but I don't quite grok your point. Are you referring to the Hierarchy problem?

    71. Re:Cool! by maple_shaft · · Score: 1

      At which point humanity would do the only wise thing with such technology... let a bunch of rich people on Wall Street hire the smartest minds to perform their automated gambling activities nano seconds faster than the other rich guys on Wall Street. We have come so far but still have so much farther to go.

    72. Re:Cool! by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      See that star out there? See if you went to it at FTL speeds, want to know what happens?
      When you arrive, the local time of that star will be the time you seen it + your travel time.
      NO CAUSALITY BROKEN.

      Would you mind sharing your amazing scientific discovery where you can have a consistent ordering of events with FTL travel? Don't forget to show how the events have the same order in all reference frames, not just one.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    73. Re:Cool! by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      To date, everything they've ever tested says that the theory of relativity, as far as we've been able to investigate, hasn't shown any cracks.

      That's not quite right.

      I'm pretty sure it is exactly right.

      - GR breaks down when you go to quantum levels

      Which we've been unable to observe/investigate. Maybe it's quantum mechanics that breaks down when it comes to gravity.

      - GR does not fully describe black holes (particularly their horizon and the singularity)

      As far as we know, GR exactly describes the event horizon and singularity. It's just that those are suspicious/surprising features. The singularity is especially suspicious, but then if the event horizon works as described, the singularity is unobservable (at least without dying unable to tell anyone about it, similar to heaven/hell).

      - GR is incomplete with regards to explaining the expansion of the universe (the discrepancy is called Dark Energy)

      That discrepancy is also called Einstein's 1917 cosmological constant, from his theory of relativity.

      Mind you, it could very well be that in reality GR is full of holes. However, we haven't actually found any. Also, you forgot to mention Dark Matter, which could very well be a flaw in GR, instead of some kind of mystery particle -- but then again, it could be a type of particle.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    74. Re:Cool! by indi0144 · · Score: 1

      Sometimes comes up the explanation Einstein gave about how his process of thought was, it was basically imagining or visualizing the problems as a simulation (think 3D / CUDA) properly substantiated in physics and only possible because the amount of "horsepower" he had in his brain. Analysis of his brain have showed that the part of the brain needed for this feat was overdeveloped in it.

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

      It's funny that i can recognize how the parent wording may sound odd, but still I can parse it without a hitch, looks like we are from the same corner of the spectra. He's assuming everyone knows this about Einstein, so without context the rest does not have much meaning.

    75. Re: Cool! by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1

      Then does nothing exist because there are no pockets, or does everything exist because there are no pockets?

      yes

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    76. Re: Cool! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Maybe enough customers bailed that it freed up bandwidth. It's like a MMOG of chicken.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    77. Re: Cool! by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      However, scientific theories are only good until a more refined one comes along.

      Nope. Newton's laws do just fine for day to day engineering. Maxwell's equations too.
      Newer scientific theories may be better as a description of reality, but you can't simulate a circuit by running QM equations. It isn't practical. QM sucks when you need to get shit done.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    78. Re:Cool! by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Sorry to blow your bubble but this isn't true.

      By assuming that you can see how all the GPS calculations are performed right away, you would find quite a few correction factors which merely indicate our limited knowledge about the reality. Theories are excellent to get an understanding of the underlying phenomena, but they cannot deliver the kind of accuracy that nowadays technology needs. Engineering relies a lot on corrections factors, which might be slightly inspired in a theoretical understanding (i.e., the results of this formula have to be slightly greater because certain phenomenon might be occurring); but these values are always created on an empirical basis (= the ones proven to work better after having been tested under many different conditions are the ones which are used). Bear in mind that the whole relativity is just a correction factor (which is only relevant at very high speeds) of classical mechanics formulae. In fact, I am in a position to tell you that this specific correction factor is certainly wrong (even by bearing in mind how difficult is confirming the validity of something under so extreme conditions).

      In summary: observing differences between the reality and our theoretical understanding should only be interpreted as a result of our limited grasp about the surrounding reality. Trying to see an implicit validation of any random theory via "it doesn't work with the old theory, so the new one should be right" is quite naive and almost dishonest. No, GPSs don't prove relativity. Nothing can prove relativity, firstly because it is wrong (sorry about that again); and secondly because its requirements (i.e., close-to-speed-of-light speeds) are still too demanding for our technology.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    79. Re:Cool! by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      The last sentence is entirely BS.

      A 4-gigahertz CPU gets its signal traveling at speed of light 7.5cm away from its source over time of 1 cycle.

      Relativity may be inaccurate. There may be extra factors we don't know - but it approximates the reality quite accurately.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    80. Re: Cool! by SomeoneFromBelgium · · Score: 1

      Yep. And since Russel already proved that the set of sets that do not contain themselves does not exist, you just hit a fundamental snag!

      Only a century too late.

    81. Re:Cool! by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      "A 4-gigahertz CPU gets its signal traveling at speed of light" -> we know about quite a few things travelling at speed of light (light itself is a good example), but we cannot measure what is happening at these speeds. We know the start and the end, what is happening in between is still a mystery.

      "Relativity may be inaccurate" -> it is certainly inaccurate (http://varocarbas.com/relativity/lorentz_general/ -> critical analysis of the Lorentz equations, which represent the first step for all the relativity equations)

      "There may be extra factors" -> there are many factors we don't know. All the physics theories (relativity too) are very simplified versions of a reality assumed to be too complex. The whole point of a theory/set of equations is delivering adequately accurate results under the given conditions (which might eventually be slightly corrected to increase accuracy); this is not the case with relativity. Additionally and in modest opinion, it has blown everything out of proportions by coming up with a fantastic world of ideas which may never be validated (or be actually useful for anything). The sole contribution of this theory (other than all the associated marketing and hair-styling benefits) was highlighting the complexity of the physical world and the limited applicability of classical mechanics beyond earth-like macroscopic conditions. All this was useful in the first half of the previous century but doesn't make too much sense now. Expecting to come up with a comprehensive theory able to perfectly explain the extremely complex physical world (about which we still know very little) is not a sensible goal. If additionally you want to accomplish this by relying on a theory which was created 100 years ago (on wrong premises, as shown in the aforementioned link) via a illuminati-like process, I wouldn't be too sure about your exact motivation; but getting an accurate grasp about what is really going on doesn't seem to be one of your top priorities.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    82. Re:Cool! by dywolf · · Score: 1

      confirmation of an expected result is not non-important.

      it may be boring, as a result that tosses all of physics into question is much more interesting...

      but confirmation of a prediction of a foundational theory is anything but non-important.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    83. Re: Cool! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      You mean like the AC I responded to?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    84. Re:Cool! by lgw · · Score: 2

      I've never found a good simple explanation. The basic idea is:

      <-A--B--
      --C--D->

      Arrows show motion, close to the speed of light.

      A sends to B FTL. In the reference frame of C and D this seems to go back in time.

      B sends to D. This takes normal time, but B and D are close.

      D sends to C. In the reference frame of A and B this seems to go back in time.

      C sends to A. This takes normal time, but C and A are close.

      In all reference frames, the message returns to A before it was sent, because everyone sees one big backwards-in-time hop.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    85. Re:Cool! by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      >For example, why build a detector that is only sensitive to waves of 100 units or larger if the models say the actual waves should only be 2 units of size?

      The wave magnitude is a function of distance.An actual wave of 2 would be 100 if the source were closer.

      The LIGO upgrade increased the diameter of the sphere in which it can detect specific events. It could have detected something beforehand if they got lucky. If it was in operation in 1987, they would have seen 1987A clearly. A linear increase in sensitivity leads to a square increase in sphere volume which leads to a square increase in the probability of detecting a event. Hopefully they get to do another upgrade and get lots of events.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    86. Re:Cool! by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      He hasn't proven shit when the HOSTs file can be bypassed by browsers and operating systems with their own hardcoded entries.

      Hardcoded entries are addressed in RFC 1918.

      I support APK's stand on a/the hosts file, and can't see why it's not used more than it is.

      My hosts file is 144247 lines long (4,332 Kb), it and a firewall serves me very well.

    87. Re:Cool! by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Everyone is talking about waves like waves when you drop a stone in water. But I still can't imagine how a wave of gravity works.

      But a gravity wave is yet another thing. I can not form an idea what happens with a gravity wave. Yeah I know the classic example of the ball on a trampoline, the curve of space. But what is a wave. Is it the distance between two 'points' in space that changes over time? Is it the speed of light that changes over time? Is it gravity that changes over time? What is the 'thing' that are projected on the values 1 and -1 in the sin function?

      I'm so far out of my league here, but what the hell...

      A wave is an oscillation (the repetitive variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    88. Re:Cool! by N3wsByt3 · · Score: 1

      Indeed, he's basically a troll. He ALWAYS asserts claims and conclusions with the utmost certainty, denying all other arguments, refusing to read anything that would contradict his own thoughts on the matter, yet never manages to give even the most basic reference or link to anything that would substantiate his own claims.

      --
      --- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
    89. Re:Cool! by N3wsByt3 · · Score: 1

      No, the parent poster is right. He's basically a troll. He ALWAYS asserts claims and conclusions with the utmost certainty, denying all other arguments, refusing to read anything that would contradict his own thoughts on the matter, yet never manages to give even the most basic reference or link to anything that would substantiate his own claims.

      --
      --- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
    90. Re:Cool! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Why not? I can imagine a lot of possible sets of physical laws. Newtonian physics was consistent (classical physics was pretty much consistent except for black-body radiation), and if it dealt in any way with the propagation of gravity could assume that it was instantaneous. Even with modern physics, time travel isn't ruled out, and assuming Special Relativity holds time travel and FTL travel are equivalent.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    91. Re:Cool! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Special relativity also tells us that, if you can exceed the speed of light in one frame of reference, you can exceed it in others.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    92. Re:Cool! by david_thornley · · Score: 2

      If I can just use one part of the Lorentz transformation, I can perhaps be clear. I'm going to do this in two parts: first I justify the time part of the Lorentz transformation, and then I show how FTL implies time travel.

      Measuring time on different spaceships Light travels at constant speed. We construct clocks on ships that tell time by bouncing photons between detectors and emitters a meter apart and counting a tick every time the light reaches a detector. We construct them to be perpendicular to the direction of travel, to make the results more intuitive. I am in a spaceship with such a clock, and you are in another one, and we're moving relative to each other.

      My clock works by timing the light travel between my emitters. They're at rest relative to me, and a meter apart. Therefore, each tick is roughly one three-hundred-millionth of a second (by the definition of a meter), as the light goes up and down relative to me in the pilot's seat, facing forward.

      Now, I look at your ship. I observe that the distance between your emitters is one meter, but that's not the distance the light travels. The emitter fires a photon at the opposite detector, but it needs to go more than a meter. In one tick (my clock) it can go to where the detector was, which (because you're moving) is not where it is in one tick. It has moved, and the light needs to go farther to reach the opposite detector. Therefore, your ticks are longer than mine as far as I can tell, and since the situation is symmetrical you see my ticks as longer than yours. This is not a contradiction, since how you perceive me doesn't have to be how I perceive you. We can synchronize clocks once, when we pass, and we can't compare them again without one ship changing speed or course. Since we can't compare them again without further action, we can't compare them, find them different, and create a contradiction. (Exactly what happens when we change speed or course requires more calculation, so we'll ignore it here.)

      Now we have instantaneous communicators (ansibles) which we synchronize when we pass. For ease of calculation, we're moving so that I perceive your tick as twice as long as mine, and vice versa. An hour after we pass, my engineer spills coffee into the main space drive, dooming my ship. I fire up the ansible and send you a message: "Please repeat - don't let the engineer take coffee into the engine room". I notice that your ship has spent half an hour after synchronization, and therefore since the ansibles are instantaneous you receive that message half an hour after we met.

      Now, you're a nice guy, so you send the message back as I requested. You send it at half an hour after we synchronized, when you perceive that fifteen minutes have passed to me. I get the message forty-five minutes before I sent it, in plenty of time to grab the engineer's mug as he heads into the engine room. We have taken special relativity and FTL communication, and sent messages back in time. FTL and special relativity then combine to produce time travel.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    93. Re:Cool! by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      You could ask someone who knows more quantum mechanics than I do, but IIRC QED and QCD incorporate Special Relativity, not General Relativity. The problem with researching GR at quantum levels is that gravity has, to a very accurate approximation, no effect on the quantum level.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    94. Re:Cool! by dl_sledding · · Score: 1

      So, who says the ship will be as small as the moon?

    95. Re:Cool! by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      but from another reference frame you may appear to go back in time.

      So what? People see events in many different ways depending on their relative speed.

      Suppose we have two people, A and B, separated by d light years.
      Further suppose that A sends a message to B, then waits for a reply.
      According to SR, A can not receive the reply from B until at least 2d years has past.
      Otherwise, SR will be broken.

      However, a causality error would only occur if A receives the reply from B before sending the original message.
      How it appears to others is irrelevant.

    96. Re:Cool! by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      Don't forget to show how the events have the same order in all reference frames, not just one.

      The only one that matters is the one where the original message originates.
      In other words, if I receive a reply to a message before I send that message, that is a causality problem.

      If it appears wrong to others, that may be confusing to them (just like watching a movie backwards is), but has nothing to do with causality in the usual sense of the term.

    97. Re:Cool! by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      Would be pretty much impossible since any sort of instantaneous action at a distance implies breaking cause and effect.

      Only by a very specialized meaning of "cause and effect".

      If I have the ability to send a message to someone at a speed greater than c, I still won't receive a reply before I send it.
      That, and only that, would constitute a real causality breach, no matter how it may appear to others.

    98. Re:Cool! by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      Don't forget to show how the events have the same order in all reference frames, not just one.

      The only one that matters is the one where the original message originates.

      Events happen in all reference frames. The message is sent from all reference frames.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    99. Re:Cool! by pupsocket · · Score: 1

      or nondirectionality of time

    100. Re:Cool! by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Probably dark matter is also a point on that list. Under the assumption that GR ist correct, observations show us that there has to be dark matter. However, we have no observations of dark matter that do not need this assumption.

      There is one, and it's substantial (If I read your post correctly).

      "In the standard model of the evolution of the universe, galactic filaments form along and follow web-like strings of dark matter. It is thought that this dark matter dictates the structure of the Universe on the grandest of scales." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    101. Re:Cool! by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      How about throwing a rock and hitting it, even though the impact point is 20 feet away and it'll take a second to get there, with both objects moving? Don't you need some serious algebra to work that out?

      Nope. No math needed. A dog playing catch doesn't use math at all. Learning can be from experience without any knowledge of the underlying science. Teach one kid lots of math and science, and never have him catch a ball. Repeat with a child that's never taught math or science. They'll both be equally inept at catching a high fly ball, likely both running too close in, and the ball going over their head. They will learn to catch the ball at about the same rate.

      You don't calculate where to stand to catch it, or the eye-hand for the last bit, but you learn it from trial and error. Or practice, if you like to call it that. And when performing the act, rather than calculating anything, you use visual feedback and training to catch it.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    102. Re:Cool! by delt0r · · Score: 1

      Hence why you have to lose relativity if you want to keep causality. It can no longer be relative, for example a preferred frame of reference.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    103. Re:Cool! by j-beda · · Score: 1

      Well, if it's energy waves, it can be used to communicate. I've seen that postulated in at least two SF stories.

      How long will it be until the first GW phone call with nothing but heavy breathing? Or the first GW phishing email?

      https://xkcd.com/1642/

    104. Re:Cool! by XXongo · · Score: 1

      Unofficial word is that they have several other detections that have yet to be announced.

    105. Re:Cool! by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      No problem. I make lots of typos like this myself.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    106. Re:Cool! by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      (Sorry for the delay in replying, but you know... ACs don't trigger a warning in the control panel and I cannot come to regularly to check whether someone replied me or not)

      I don't want to be impolite, but I have gone down this road quite a few times in the past (I wrote this article some months ago and, at the start, I tried to trigger a discussion in many places). Here you have some basic ideas: there is no other alternative to Lorentz; these equations represent the starting point of relativity and of all what came afterwards (even Minkowski and his space-time was an interpretation of these equations). The point I am trying to prove is that this is a completely wrong development (i.e., there is no way to correct it). The relativity was created by interpreting wrong equations; all the ideas, all the formulae (e.g., E=mc2) are wrong; all this without denying the impact of such a theory to revolutionise physics (and to help us understand better the surrounding complexity). All these contents are public domain (as any other thing in my sites) and self-descriptive enough. I have also included clear references about my exact expectations (= getting a bit of free advertisement). I seriously don't want to get involved into (IMHO) faith-based discussions which have not direct effect on my professional activity (= software development). On the other hand, I think that the label "science" is associated with certain requisites and goals and that's why consider fair to openly criticise people mostly interested in not-too-scientific goals (i.e., proving the validity of something no matter what; creating kind of prophets and miracles exclusively based "it has to be like this"; etc.). Additionally, I cannot tolerate anyone to damage me or unmotivatedly criticise my knowledge/attitude/expectations.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    107. Re:Cool! by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      First thing to clarify, I am not a conspiracy-fan at absolutely any level. I know the reality: relativity has no real-life (= all the technology we use) implications + has wrong/non-correctable origins; but quite a few people seem to be very interested in telling otherwise (I found particularly surprising the worldwide celebration of the some-days-ago really-saying-nothing news). Also you can read a big proportion of the comments here (or in other relativity or Einstein posts) just saying how marvellous and perfect each single bit is, most of the times by relying on faulty or plainly-untrue statements; to not mention the tremendous commercialisation of Einstein, his formula, his theory, etc. If you ask random people about the most perfect being who ever lived, a big proportion of them would say Einstein (even without understanding his theory at all or having any relationships with physics). This is what I call converting someone into a prophet/saint. In any case, I am sure that a big proportion of people working on relativity (mainly the youngest ones) seriously believe in it; on the other hand, I also know that a relevant proportion of them (mainly more experienced people) have had serious doubts about it since long time ago. Scientists in doubt are expected to work on confirming/dismissing the given point; but most of the aforementioned people for whom some things don't make too much sense haven't done any effort to analyse the problem properly (and, after having done it, I can confirm that it isn't so difficult). Additionally, there are quite a few more-egoist interests involved into all this (a very important revenue generation at many levels) for whom scientific goals, like finding the truth, are irrelevant. This is what I think. Is this a conspiracy? Not sure; but I am certainly not a conspiracy theoretician.

      "say all such formulas are wrong" -> I understand that this might sound a bit excessive (it surprised me a lot when I firstly realised about it, even despite of having never believed in the theory; note that I did this analysis around 10 years ago), but this is the reality and there is nothing you can do to “fix it”. Let me put an example: imagine that I create a new theory based upon a new formula for velocity, v = (s+2)/t. You believe it, together with all my justifications and the associated implications (e.g., I assumed that there is a new particle we haven't even seen which I call alvaron and affects everything just a little bit; I even came up with a set of formulae to calculate the variation provoked by it in the most common physical phenomena). You start to extend/improve my theory and to apply it to many other different situations. Years later, it has grown much bigger than what I firstly created; but someone proves that my assumptions were wrong and that my original v = (s+2)/t didn't make any sense. All what you built on that assumption is also wrong now; your proofs are either faulty or the result of limited precision in the measurements or misinterpretation of the results or even pure chance; either way, none them make any sense. The whole theory of relativity is just (-> this point seems to not be too clear to the public opinion; why? -> a conspiracy? No. Just the reality) an application of the Lorentz Transformation (Lorentz created the basic formulae for converting space/time and Einstein plainly applied these formulae to further situations, like calculations involving energy); if the Lorentz Transformation is wrong, the whole relativity (all its formulae) is also wrong. The Lorentz equations are completely and absolute wrong (perhaps they made sense 100 years ago among people who were starting to understand that their so-far-assumed-perfect knowledge had a limited applicability) and, consequently, all what Einstein created based upon them (e.g., E=mc2) is also wrong. Logically, I am saying all this without minimising the very important impact of this theory in the evolution of modern physics (i.e., the ideas were fine; the actual implementation was wrong. Continue

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    108. Re:Cool! by lgw · · Score: 1

      Not if you include those "others" in the message sending. A to B to C to D back to A. Two FTL messages, A to B and C to D, means A gets the message before he sends it (as everyone sees the message go back in time somewhere along the route).

      Contrived, but possible.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    109. Re:Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      You've said a lot of nothing. You haven't explained how your brain works out where things go. The topic is fascinating; it has a lot to do with visual and spatial processing, as well as with more basic functions like the brain reorganizing itself so that impulses travel along a path of lowest energy demand. Any mental effort involves jumping off that track.

      Essentially, you've described slow, brute-force learning. Practice is, in a cognitive sense, an activity which generates errors; deliberate practice is a particular form of practice which optimizes the speed of learning by focusing on the most weak technical skills in a goal-oriented fashion, using constant and immediate feedback mechanisms to allow continuous correction of the largest errors while generating those errors intentionally by repeating the weakest skills. There's a large difference between that and the naive method; anyone who's spent their whole life playing the same songs on piano day in and day out and never gotten any better should make obvious that's not the most effective way to learn.

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      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    110. Re:Cool! by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      You've said a lot of nothing.

      Then let me be direct. Since a dog can catch a ball and can't understand a parabola, that's proof you are wrong.

      You are wrong. All evidence proves you wrong. Have you ever caught a ball? If so (and from how you talk about it, it's doubtful), what math did you do?

      You use brute force learning. Muscle memory and eye-hand coordination are terms for learning something without learning how you did it.

      I not only know why, but I know how to leverage the same facilities to do other things. Hell, I know why a few weeks of therapy is more than twice as effective as drugs at long-term curing of severe depression. I know why Ben Pridmore can memorize the order of 27 decks of cards in 3 minutes. I know why I was always better at math than my classmates.

      Then tell us. Otherwise, it sounds like you don't actually know.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    111. Re:Cool! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Then let me be direct. Since a dog can catch a ball and can't understand a parabola, that's proof you are wrong.

      No, it's not.

      You use brute force learning. Muscle memory and eye-hand coordination are terms for learning something without learning how you did it.

      No, I don't. When I practice piano, I focus on the techniques which I struggle most with. I identify what specific technical concepts I'm weak in when I can't play a certain piece, and direct my attention there. By brute force, you would just sit down and go, "Duhr, this song r hard, I must r 2 practice." Maksim Mrvica didn't do that; he sat down and said, "Hmm, this part trips me up... I have trouble with Sus7 chords in the Dm scale, so I should drill on those." Herman Li did the same when practicing guitar. Oatsngoats practices Super Metroid speed running in the same way, and moved from casual times to within 20 seconds of world record in under a year; meanwhile people who just do speedruns straight through day after day without picking out their weaknesses and practicing those, specifically, have sunk five times as much time and effort into it and are barely faster than when they started.

      Then tell us. Otherwise, it sounds like you don't actually know.

      Catching a ball? It's visuo-spatial. The temporal lobe handles spatial reasoning, essentially taking in the visual data from your eyes and generating an internal simulation of the world around you (you're not living in the real world, but a simulation that closely matches it). Same as anything else, you learn more rapidly if you actually pay attention, take notice of those exact conditions which repeatedly cause you trouble, and repeat them. Some scientific studies have observed improvement in learning if you focus on those situations and play them back internally, replaying the visual and spatial information through your brain and letting it experiment internally--that is, you can get better at catching a ball by thinking *really* *hard* about catching a ball, if you actually follow the ball's path and your physical actions in response.

      Cognitive therapy is more effective for treating depression because the brain always follows the least energy-demanding path. If you always focus on depression, it becomes hard to be not-depressed; if you push back, you'll become mentally drained. If you push back *all* *the* *time*, if you reframe (less energy), and if you generally develop long-term mental habits to control depression and anxiety, those mental problems diminish. Essentially, the therapy targets executive functions, putting pressure on the brain until it reroutes some of its default pathways to follow more desirable mental behaviors. We often call this "Habit".

      Ben Pridmore can memorize the order of 27 decks of cards in 3 minutes because he converts the cards into a number system, which is then converted into a system of visual imagery, which is then stored spatially. He's spent a lot of time reviewing those images and drilling the ones that are slow or weak, so can reuse them pretty readily. He also uses a more highly-compressed system than most speed cards contestants, storing more cards in fewer images and fewer spatial locations; it takes longer to learn that system than a simple PAO, which itself takes a hell of a lot longer to learn than a mnemonic major system.

      I was always better at math because I make heavy use of reflection. Check the CIL manual on MSDN. I'd look at any mathematical behavior and identify how it interacted with every other mathematical behavior, creating strong associations between my entire body of mathematical knowledge. I'd forget large bodies of concepts and formulas, and then re-derive them whenever I needed by looking at other relationships and working out how that stuff operated. I used to get ahead of my teachers by deriving new concepts before we reached that chapter in the book.

      None of these are special g

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  2. So is the 5th or 6th fundamental force? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

    * Strong Intergalactic Force, or the
    * Weak Intergalactic Force.

    When are white holes going to be discovered? :-)

    1. Re:So is the 5th or 6th fundamental force? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 5, Funny

      When are white holes going to be discovered? :-)

      #BlackHolesMatter...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    2. Re:So is the 5th or 6th fundamental force? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Funny

      When are white holes going to be discovered? :-)

      Watch the Oscars.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    3. Re:So is the 5th or 6th fundamental force? by chipschap · · Score: 1

      When are white holes going to be discovered? :-)

      Racist!

    4. Re:So is the 5th or 6th fundamental force? by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1

      When are white holes going to be discovered? :-)

      They a!ready have been and you can oberve them too! Go to the nearest university they are usually members the Greek fraternities

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    5. Re:So is the 5th or 6th fundamental force? by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      We already discovered one white hole, it happened a few billion years ago and created our universe. Would you really like to see another one happen? I can't imagine it would be a good thing to witness that kind of thing...

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    6. Re:So is the 5th or 6th fundamental force? by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      10 or more solar masses of it to be exact.

  3. They did what? by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh, wait, that wasn't LEGO scientists.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:They did what? by RivenAleem · · Score: 4, Funny

      LEGO Scientists are attempting to detect Agony waves which occur when a foot collides with a brick in the dark. It turns out to be a very interesting problem. While most people have problems with a detector sensitive enough to find weak signals, the LEGO scientists are having the opposite.

    2. Re:They did what? by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 1

      I have a considerable collection of LEGO's at home, which is perhaps the reason why I had to read that headline thrice in incredulity before getting it.

    3. Re:They did what? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Blockhead

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    4. Re:They did what? by KGIII · · Score: 4, Funny

      They're caltrops and you suffer 1d4 worth of damage as well as having a movement penalty.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    5. Re:They did what? by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      Project page of the Lego Accelerator

    6. Re:They did what? by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Have I ever told you I love you?

      Man, stepping on LEGO with your heel has got to be the worst thing...

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    7. Re:They did what? by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      What do your LEGO Bricks own?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    8. Re:They did what? by KGIII · · Score: 2

      They are truly vile things. I have stepped on my fair share and been sorely tempted to remove them from my child's care, forever. It's even worse when it's in the middle of the night, it's dark, and you're on the stairs. :/

      But, you can't really take them away, at least not forever... They'll have grown up without LEGOs and you'll be a monster with kids who have no creativity. You can take 'em away for a little while but that usually means you've gotta find 'em all and pick them up yourself. I found a compromise. If I found it on the floor, after they were in bed, it went in the trash. That sort of worked...

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  4. Fast by monkeyxpress · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, this must be a world record for slashdot - the press release only just made it out. Having said that, this was possibly the worst kept announcement in the history of science journalism.

    1. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Not just in Slashdot. And everywhere the same disproportionate happiness and involvement (even of people with no solid background) about something whose practical interest seems none.

      After reading quite a few references, I haven't seen a single critical/deep analysis; just the same sentences repeated over and over. Together with pure nonsense like "I see how the space-time is being affected" (-> in a simplistic 2D plot?!).

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    2. Re:Fast by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      You can safely assume that a tremendous amount of people have been sitting on the edge of their seats for this.

      Confirmation of yet another aspect of Relativity is a big deal -- this is a theory with a perfect track record and which pretty much describes almost everything about the universe.

      Disproving any of his stuff would rock the scientific community. Continuing to prove again and again just how right he was? That's worthy of some coverage, and NOBODY who covers this stuff was going to miss it.

      Everybody learns who Einstein is when they're kids, and they know hew as really smart and had crazy hair. And then the more you see what he actually did, you just look at it and think "sweet damn that was one smart man".

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Fast by justthinkit · · Score: 1

      I haven't seen a single critical/deep analysis

      If you really are looking for something different...

      --
      I come here for the love
    4. Re:Fast by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      Well, it will take time for the gravity of this result to ripple through the media ...

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    5. Re:Fast by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      Wow, this must be a world record for slashdot - the press release only just made it out.

      Holy shit, maybe the new owners are actually accomplishing something!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    6. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Thanks for sharing.

      Just to clarify, I am not looking for dissident opinions (I have a VERY strong one myself :)). I tried to highlight how curious has been this whole process. For example, I have read that the paper was peer-reviewed before the press conference?! What is way beyond abnormally quick.

      I don't think that I like the kind of people/organisations/interests/expectations involved into all this (not talking about seriously-believing, hardworking physicists).

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    7. Re: Fast by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      That's OK, we still have four months for the "dust on the detector" story.

      Science is continuous, not discrete - stories that begin with "It's Official" can be safely filed under, "we'll see".

      Which is a Good Thing.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    8. Re:Fast by justthinkit · · Score: 1

      I'm curious, do you value the opinions of an extremely small group of peers over the opinions of an extremely large group of people (i.e. the world)? If you do, why do you?

      --
      I come here for the love
    9. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      I think that you didn't understand my point. Within the research world (University Professors, PhDs, etc. publishing papers), there is a required requisite called peer-review where other scientists review your work and decide whether it is worthy or not. No research paper can be published in a scientific magazine before being peer-reviewed (= all the scientific papers have to pass through this). This process is quite slow; but surprisingly not here and this was the point of my comment. In any case and by answering to your question: I don't care about the number of persons repeating an idea; I care about reasons and justifications. But if I have to give a quick and absolute answer, here it goes: groups of people tend to be very stupid (the bigger the group, the more stupid), so I would choose the small group.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    10. Re:Fast by justthinkit · · Score: 1

      I think the answer is not so simple.

      A small group of anyone you care to pick has the potential of being right, and of being wrong. In ways that are, frankly, impossible to predict.

      A large group is quite likely wrong in its majority views, and certainly wrong in a greater number of ways. But it is also more likely to contain one or more correct views.

      It is like comparing the +5 comments to every comment. Personally, I prefer to browse at -1.

      --
      I come here for the love
    11. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      There is a clear difference between you and me: you expect to find the solution somewhere else (i.e., a person/group of persons being right); but I try to find the solution myself (i.e., by understanding the given issue with or without help). Our goals are different and that's why we have different expectations regarding the best way to reach them :)

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    12. Re:Fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Of course the paper was peer reviewed first. "Science by press conference" is a slur, and a terrible way to do science. This result was detected in September, you ape, and it's not like this is their first publication. They have been grilled over their methodology quite a bit to date, and if you think that this was "rushed through" you clearly have no idea how peer review works.

    13. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      You have described it even better this time (commented to other of your comments, but didn't replied me...): "...kids, and they know he was really smart and had crazy hair". Hearing the opinions of kids and looking at the hair of the people are perhaps the two more accurate ways to confirm a theory. That's why I personally didn't need today's picture, because I knew already that kids couldn't be wrong much less about a man with a so cool hair. Although today's 2D graph is a tremendous proof too! I mean... I can see how the space-time is changing (almost dancing) in front of my eyes!

      Some people believe in empirically-verifiable & practically useful science, being completely consistent with the remaining human knowledge and whose only goal is pursuing the truth. But why being bored with ugly numbers and uncomfortable conclusions, when you can have happy kids and a nice crazy hair (AND a 2D graph)!

      PS: sorry about the sarcasm, but I have read too many weird things today (and an AC dared to call me "ape" a while ago, incredible!) which aren’t kind of fair. If you want to call something science, you should accept the consequences: drawing arbitrary conclusions without any kind of proof (other than being consistent with other arbitrary conclusions, which were drawn from other arbitrary conclusions which were, etc.) isn't science.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    14. Re:Fast by justthinkit · · Score: 1

      I think you know incredibly little about me, and certainly not enough to state that I "expect to find the solution somewhere else".

      Your latest post amounts to an Ad hominem thrust, followed by a deflecting "we're all different". While carefully avoiding further discussion of the uselessness of the peer-review process.

      Well played, sir.

      --
      I come here for the love
    15. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      "I think you know incredibly little about me" -> I don't know absolutely anything about you, why would I think otherwise? You misunderstood my previous comment. With my "you expect to find the solution somewhere else" I was referring to your "A large group is quite likely wrong in its majority views...". The point of my comment was differentiating between finding (someone having) the right opinion and discussing to come up with the right opinion. I wasn't trying to define you, just trying to (nicely) avoid getting involved in the kind of discussion which I don’t don't like too much. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

      “Your latest post amounts to an Ad hominem”-> (thanks for the link with the explanations, honestly it was helpful. Although I should know more Latin than you, not just because of being Spaniard, but also because of having studied Latin) -> This is completely wrong. I am a very objective person always focused on abstract ideas like correctness, fairness, etc. I rarely take things personally and don't expect anyone to do so; unless pushed to do it; for example, a stupid AC insulted me in a comment below and I did take things personally (currently, I am in a period of no tolerance with stupidity). I might get a bit passionate in a discussion (or perhaps might use sarcasm too much...) and some people might misunderstand some of my words/actions. But I assure you that I never expressly focus on the personality/attitude/weakness of the person; unless as a defense/reaction. For example: an insult (well... quite a few of them :)), as a reaction to an insult; or giving a small lesson of humility to a not-too-knowledgeable individual unfairly and unmotivatedly showing a condescending attitude (note that the fact of being not too knowledgeable represents an extra-motivation for me in application of the idea "you are starting a war without weapons?! You are too stupid for this world! And I will certainly enjoy helping you to see some light").

      "followed by a deflecting "we're all different"" -> I am a very straightforward person who doesn't need to deflect anything. Additionally, not sure from where have you got this sentence; I usually say "we all are equal", but with different personalities (which I don't have to like).

      "carefully avoiding further discussion" -> again something which isn't just untrue, but also completely against my personality. If I want to avoid a discussion, I would plainly say it, in any context and with anyone; why wouldn't I do it with a person who I don't even know while talking about something not too relevant to me? I didn't avoid any discussion; just didn't want to deepen in a chat about abstract issues, what I don't enjoy. Additionally, I wasn't sure if you understood what the peer-review process was. Regarding my opinion about this peer-reviewing, I am not involved into this world (not a researcher) and that's why I cannot have a worthy opinion. But as said before, big groups are stupid and easily manipulable; additionally, they are rarely knowledgeable (and most of them are not even aware or don't care). So, the opinion of a few million people might be completely useless; they might be a bunch of noisy followers adequately manipulated by low self-esteem idiots (-> it seems that being surrounded and supported by many blind followers help them). In any case, all this doesn't make any sense at the scientific level; science is too specialised and complex to be judged by random individuals. Relativity is the kind of easy complexity (= not complexity at all; but shown as complexity to the less educated persons) which might be appealing to the kind of give-me-a-sentence-to-repeat member of a big group, but this isn't science.

      Well played, sir. -> (please, don't get offended) Have you seen the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? (if not, see it; excellent show, I think that my favourite one in the last years). This last sentence of yours reminded me to Dennis, in one of his fantastic mind games (with himself). Sorry to disappointed you, but I haven't played anything; apparently, you were playing all alone. I was just trying to cut a conversation which seemed to start going in a direction I don't like too much (= this long message).

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    16. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      (Sorry for the delay in replying, but AC's replies are not warned in my control panel)

      Honestly, I didn't read the summary; and this has nothing to do with the typical attitude of Slashdotters (I am new here, but have read a lot about this) of never reading the summary, just commenting. I didn't read the summary because this isn't information for me, just a set of lies. Even though, the point of my comment wasn't highlighting this fact (that this is a tremendous lie and set of manipulation’s with not relationship whatsoever with science), but how curious was all this evolution; I followed it via Twitter, where I read the being already peer-reviewed issue. In summary: I wasn't commenting about this specific article (which I didn't read), not even about specific lies; I was commenting about the peculiarities of this whole "discovery". If I misunderstood some point (e.g., time enough to have been properly peer-reviewed), a nice warning would have been more than for having apologised and corrected my position on this point. In any case, I want to highlight that "took place in September 2015" doesn't imply anything; the measurements might have been taken on that date, but the paper might have been written (and peer-reviewed) much later.

      Regarding the rest of things you are saying, it is pure nonsense: most of the statements in your second paragraph are completely wrong and denote your low understanding of this specific matter; you are basically talking abstractly about what you don't know. Your last paragraph is plainly a joke as far as you are using words which you don't seem to even understand; for example: "empirical" is pretty much the opposite to all what relativity means; relativity is a theory which haven't ever been validated and which is plainly wrong. You are repeating sentences which other people with the same limited knowledge than you repeated before (do you also think that GPS systems work thanks to relativity?).

      The part I like the most (of you people, in general) is your last sentence "frankly I doubt you even understand what you're arguing, for or against". I am sorry if reality affects the dreams and hopes of people wanting to believe in magic, but I cannot afford to allow a completely clueless person to, firstly, insult me and to secondly try to show an absolute lack of understanding as proof of knowledge and attack others on account of such a nonsense. So, I don't understand? Perhaps because I am an engineer using physics as they were originally meant to be used? As a preliminary step helping us to understand the surrounding world, but by assuming that elucubrations (= abstract theories) can rarely accurately model the reality and EMPIRICALLY (-> yes, the word you use and you don't understand is the one defining me and people like me, not the opposite) correct them to have reliable results, measurements, machines, etc. But some theoretical physicists (and, since some years ago, blind followers with no real knowledge, but liking nice-looking equations, crazy hair, fantastic worlds of complexities anyone can understand and, on top of everything, believing on something/someone which/who is and always will be nice and perfect) forgot about all this quite a few years ago and started to build a world of made-up ideas and concepts which have no justification, other than being based on previous sets of ideas and concepts... and so on until reaching a starting point which, FYI, I have analysed and proven wrong. This starting point is called the Lorentz equations; a tremendously wrong mathematical development started from basic classic formulae (v = s/t), which was taken 100 years ago as an excuse to build up a fantastic world which has never (and will ever) be empirically validated. Better: you can even forget (what is impossible by applying maths/science) about the pure nonsense defining this starting point and just focus on its results to understand its true relevance (= none). The Lorentz equations (remember that the whole relativity was built on this) have no practical utility;

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    17. Re:Fast by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Although I do understand that my comment was quite strong, it is the reaction to a previous non-provoked insult. The "person" arbitrarily insulting me was modded up and my answer was modded-down as troll?! Shouldn't both comments have been modded down as off-topic? Anyway... I guess that this is what you get when dealing with fans of relativity.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  5. Surf's up! by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Forget hoverboards, we need to start surfing gravity waves.

    1. Re:Surf's up! by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      Since they passed through the entire planet you did, on the 14th September last year. Hope you enjoyed it.

  6. Anyone can answer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Are gravitational waves different from gravity? Because this article would have you believe that the speed at which they propagate is speed of light, where as gravity has instant effect AFAIK.

    1. Re:Anyone can answer? by Amouth · · Score: 1, Informative

      While gravity can be viewed as having an instant effect, the propagation of changes in gravity influence moves at the speed of light. That propagation action can been rationalized like a wave.

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    2. Re:Anyone can answer? by Falos · · Score: 1

      As sister post said. FTA two black holes collided +1B years ago, +1B lightyears away, and we had lasers'n'shit set up finely enough that they could observe the wave pass by, observe the relativity'n'shit effects coming in.

      I think s/he also was saying that when the wave (zone of effect) does arrive the implementation does apply instantly.

      IANAS so this is my understanding and is possibly me talking out my ass.

    3. Re:Anyone can answer? by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 1

      gravity can be viewed as having an instant effect

      What does this mean? I think I understand that if the sun moves away quickly we will not notice this for a few minutes (time for the wave to go from the sun to us). I do not know what then is "instant".

    4. Re:Anyone can answer? by joe_frisch · · Score: 1

      Gravity also propagates at the speed of light. If the sun were split in half, and each half thrown out of the plane of the solar system at near light speed, it would still take the 8 minutes of light travel time to the earth for any effect at all to be detected.

      The difference between gravity and gravity waves is like the difference between an electric field and electromagnetic radiation. They are closely related, but one is a static field, the other a propagating wave.

    5. Re:Anyone can answer? by Amouth · · Score: 1

      when i said "instant" i meant the current observed effect of gravity. As I move through space i feel gravity everywhere and always and there for the bull feels instant as i move into an area of higher gravity. i guess "constant" would have been a better term to use, but i was trying to phrase it using the words of the GP in order to make a link for the explanation.

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    6. Re:Anyone can answer? by 0dugo0 · · Score: 1

      Exactly the speed of light? I didn't expect such completely different things to propagate at the same speed. Their mass (~0) and what they propagate through (~empty space) are probably the same, but still..

    7. Re:Anyone can answer? by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      The speed of light is less about a speed of one thing, and probably more about a property of space-time that just happens to affect how fast photons move through space.

      So, ultimately, anything attempting to propagate through space will be affected in some way by that property. If space-time is made up of something that pushes back as you go faster, once you get to a certain speed, you won't go any faster.

      So if gravity tries to act more quickly than the speed of light, then space-time may be pushing back on gravity as well. This makes more sense if you assume there is an actual massless particle called a gravaton which transfers the gravitational force that is affected in much the same way as the photon by this same property of space-time and hence, has exactly the same speed through vacuum.

    8. Re:Anyone can answer? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      From various observations (and the theory of general relativity) we're pretty sure gravity propagates at the speed of light. You find gravity everywhere because it's already there, the same way that walking from a dark room into sunlight doesn't imply that light travels from the sun to your eyeballs instantaneously.

      If the sun were suddenly dematerialized you would continue to see sunlight for another eight minutes. We are also fairly sure that the Earth would continue in it's orbit as if nothing had happened for eight minutes, until the gravitational effects of the disappearing sun had time to propagate.

    9. Re:Anyone can answer? by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      I think s/he also was saying that when the wave (zone of effect) does arrive the implementation does apply instantly.

      I don't understand referring to something that has already happened as "instantly".

    10. Re:Anyone can answer? by j-beda · · Score: 1

      So gravity's a bit weird (understatement of the century, but let's go with it). If you have two massive objects at a distance and they move inertially with respect to each other, each of them will feel a gravitational pull towards each other in the direction of their instantaneous positions, so there is no lightspeed delay.

      I may be mis-reading your satement, but as written it seems incorrect. Two massive object at a distance moving "interially" with respect to each other experiences a gravitational pull towards each other, in the direction where they were in the past. For example, for a star, the gravity pulls in the same direction what the starlight came from.

      It has been a long time since I tried to do any GR calculations, and my tensor manipulation skiz are very atrophied, but I am very confident that GR is fully compliant with special relativlty, and all those SR transformations mess up the concept of exactly where distant objects "are" depending on exactly which frame one is speaking of, but in no case would I want to think that even for constantly moving massive object there was any "instant" propagation of field directions. If you have any references indicating otherwise, I would like to learn of them.

  7. Why this matters by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    This matters for a bunch of reasons. First, it helps close confirm predictions of general relativity. We had a lot of evidence already but more is good. Second, if we get more data we might be able to rule out or narrow down our search space for any eventual quantum gravity theory since they have predictions about how gravity waves should behave (although this would require massively upgrading LIGO). Third, this gives us insight into stellar objects that we normally lack the ability to examine. For example, we don't know much about what the cores of neutron stars are like, but different ideas about them give different predictions about what sort of gravity waves two merging neutron stars will create. So this may give us more data about what exotic objects are actually doing. Fourth, this gives us for the first time a way of getting data from very far away sources that isn't in the electromagnetic spectrum. Right now, we can detect neutrino bursts if they come from a few million light years away but pretty much everything from outside our little galactic neighborhood has to come either from electromagnetic radiation or detecting cosmic rays. But LIGO can already detect gravity waves from events that are a billion light years away. So this gives us a whole new long type of data.

    1. Re:Why this matters by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 1, Interesting

      > We had a lot of evidence already but more is good

      Oh come on. We have a lot of evidence that the sky is blue, how much money should be spend on gathering more evidence of that?

      > Second, if we get more data we might be able to rule out or narrow down our search space for any eventual quantum gravity theory

      That would be true if the measurement *disagreed* with the predictions, but it *agrees* with them. That is, this result helps make QG *harder*.

      > Third, this gives us insight into stellar objects

      Oh god, it absolutely does not. You need to look at the magnitudes and the error bars.

      > Fourth, this gives us for the first time a way of getting data from very far away sources that isn't in the electromagnetic spectrum.

      First time eh?

      > Right now, we can detect neutrino bursts if they come from a few million light years

      Oh, you mean "first time, except", like "fresh from the freezer".

      Neutrino observation has the same range limits (the light cone) as gravity, but is far more useful and always will be. It's those magnitudes again.

    2. Re:Why this matters by kheldan · · Score: 1

      Never mind all that, when do we get actual hoverboards (not those fire hazards on wheels we keep seeing in the news)? And Kzinti-style gravity polarizers to replace chemical rockets? And Lift Belts so I can just fly to work above the treetops and skip all the traffic? Don't tell me "it's five years away", we all know what THAT means!

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    3. Re:Why this matters by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Basically, it mostly matters to the theoretical-physicists-based economy. To all these people for whom the validity of the Relativity is required (together with all what follows to it, like Quantum Mechanics), because in case of being proven wrong (and/or useless), lots of big projects/reputations/money-generations might be lost.

      In any case, I am sure that scientists (or similar) with a bit of self-respect will never lie (to themselves or others) by doing something against one of the defining principles of the scientific community: finding the truth, no matter what.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    4. Re:Why this matters by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      PS: I realised now that, curiously, one of the articles in the summary is from the Economist. It makes kind of sense to me (because of the aforementioned reason), although it might be a bit confusing to those thinking that this announcement has only to do with science/physics.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    5. Re:Why this matters by ganv · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think you don't understand. We now have an entirely new way to observe what happens in regions of the universe where the mass density is high and changing. In many ways, this is like the first telescope. It is an entirely new way of observing. The reason this is so important is not the single black hole merger they detected. It is because this is the first of what will become a major source of astronomical data. Soon other frequency ranges of gravitational waves will be measurable (see LISA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). Just because the first observation agrees with existing theory is no reason to dismiss an entirely new class of measurements as uninteresting.

    6. Re:Why this matters by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      Basically, it mostly matters to the theoretical-physicists-based economy. To all these people for whom the validity of the Relativity is required (together with all what follows to it, like Quantum Mechanics), because in case of being proven wrong (and/or useless), lots of big projects/reputations/money-generations might be lost.

      It is true that we don't have a direct application of this at the moment, but most things don't have direct applications when they are initially discovered. Electricity didn't, nor did radioactivity, nor did relativity (which is actually applied in GPS systems). But there are a lot of people who care about this who aren't theoretical physics people (I'm a mathematician for example.) Moreover, there would actually be more likely be money and new big projects if the gravity waves didn't meet the theoretical expectations. It is much easier to get money for research when a field is in a state of complete confusion.

      Finally, please note that quantum mechanics doesn't follow relativity, but is essentially orthogonal. One can do quantum mechanics in a completely classical space-time (and in fact that's much easier). Special relativity can be made consistent with QM, but we cannot at this point reconcile quantum mechanics and GR.

    7. Re:Why this matters by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      As a mathematician, you might be interested in taking a look at this: http://varocarbas.com/relativi...

      PS: your "relativity (which is actually applied in GPS systems)" is a generic statement whose real applicability is most likely none (i.e., some corrections are applied, but most likely the ones proven to be more reliable rather than theoretical values). The fact of using correction factors is only indicative of the tremendous complexity of the given reality (and of our limited knowledge), not an absolute proof of validity of certain theory. Additionally, this is a normal proceeding in engineering (i.e., weighting to make something work, even without fully understanding it); generic formulae/theories are rarely applied directly. I am a mechanical engineer and only learned about relativity (or modern physics) in an introductory/anecdotal subject, because nothing of this is useful for us.

      PPS: I don't have too much knowledge about QM. I was under the impression that some of its theorems derived directly from the relativity, but might be wrong.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    8. Re:Why this matters by pz · · Score: 2

      The reason this is so important is not the single black hole merger they detected.

      AND, it was detected during a shake-down run that wasn't intended for scientific investigation. Either they were incredibly lucky, or these things happen all the frelling time, and we're about to view a cacophony of zip/whip/zuups.

      It is because this is the first of what will become a major source of astronomical data.

      Indeed -- one of the unaddresed issues (so completely, blatanly unaddresed that I suspect the scientists involved have been blinded by the success) is using gravity waves for real astronomy. Wait, wait, bear with me for a second; I'm not saying what they did wasn't real astronomy. Consider the one overlay map that was shown during the press conference of the probable location of the source, based on the single event as viewed by the two separate LIGO detectors in the US. That was deduced based on matching up the data signatures, time delays, and known geometries between the two detectors. Effectively doing source identification with a stereo recording (I did much of my graduate work applying that sort of analysis to a different kind of recordings) by using the two detectors as a phased array of size 2. With really serious amounts of computing power, that phased array should be able to give you a map of gravity wave intensity / frequency (think brightness and color) for THE ENTIRE SKY. With only two detectors, it will be very fuzzy, but as more detectors are brought on line across the globe, the resolution of such a real-time map would improve dramatically.

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    9. Re:Why this matters by ganv · · Score: 2

      Yes, and gravity wave astronomy could become a hugely important complement to electromagnetic astronomy. Because gravity wave frequencies are set by the motion of mass rather than by atomic (or other) transitions between quantum states of charged particles, gravity waves provide a more direct measurement of the motion of the objects in the systems of interest. So we directly measure the time dependent frequency of one signal and can immediately determine orbital parameters of relatively small objects that are a billion light years away. Imagine a day when we can detect black hole and neutron star binaries much earlier in their inspiral. We could be continuously monitoring millions of gravity wave sources spread across the universe and develop a much more precise picture of how our universe works. General relativity would either be become a theory with the quantitative triumphs of quantum mechanics or it would be replaced by something more accurate. It is an exciting day!

    10. Re:Why this matters by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      -1, Blithering Idiot.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  8. It won't be long before... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    The wave motion engine gets built to travel between galaxies to Iscandar and save humanity from the Gamilon radiation bombs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato_(spaceship)

  9. What is a gravity wave? by nanospook · · Score: 2

    It's not something that moves along is it? It's a perceived distortion of time space? I'm thinking of the metaphor of the flat surface with the heavy object in it that shows in 3d how mass would be attracted to mass. So what is a wave? A flexing of space time? or is it time to update the usual way of thinking of it?

    --
    Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
    1. Re:What is a gravity wave? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Essentially a flexing of space, but it isn't easy to visualize. Imagine a circle as a gravity wave goes through it then the horizontal direction will get flattened and the vertical (direction of the wave) will get stretched out, and then the reverse. The actual equations for what it does to an object though are non-trivial.

    2. Re:What is a gravity wave? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      It's not something that moves along is it?

      Err... I think it's like water waves in that sense. No thing is moving in the same direction as the wave. The water molecules only move up and down, but the combined movement becomes this thing we call a wave.

      It's a perceived distortion of time space?

      It's perceived as a change in the distortion of spacetime. I'm not sure if we've been able to measure static distortions of spacetime yet (not directly, anyway; we can see gravitational lensing for example, and of course falling is a direct consequence of spacetime distortion).

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    3. Re:What is a gravity wave? by joe_frisch · · Score: 1

      It not that different from an electromagnetic wave (light). With an electromagnetic wave, if you have two charged objects at different locations they will feel a force that causes them to move relative to each other. In electromagnetism you can also detect the motion with one particle because it feels an acceleration.

      With a gravity wave, two massive objects will move relative to each other. Here you can't detect with a single object because it feels no acceleration - the object is in free fall even though it is moving relative to distant objects. Still the idea is very similar.

      If gravity waves were very strong, you could detect them with two pendulums and a ruler.

      BTW - they are are quadrople radiation, so if you have an array of objects you are looking at, they will be squeezed together along one axis and stretched apart along the second. This (roughtly) follows from conservation of momentum - you can't move the center of mass of an object up an back without moving something else in the opposite direction.

    4. Re:What is a gravity wave? by Deadstick · · Score: 1

      No thing is moving in the same direction as the wave.

      Not quite an exact analogy. In water waves, an individual molecule moves slightly forward as it goes up and slightly backward as it goes down, following an approximately elliptic path. But yes, it has no mean movement in the wave direction.

      It's easiest to think of a wave as a traveling disturbance.

    5. Re:What is a gravity wave? by david_bonn · · Score: 1

      Here's an easy though experiment.

      You have several masses. They are on *very* tight pieces of piano wire so they only can move along one dimension -- imagine that the piano wire goes through the center of the mass and the mass can slide freely along the wire. If you wiggle one mass up and down along the piano wire, the others masses will wiggle along their piano wires as well. That "wiggling" is caused by gravitational radiation.

      You can do the same thing with electrically charged objects to demonstrate electromagnetic radiation. Although given that electromagnetism is so much stronger than gravity, it is much easier to have a classroom demo of this phenomenon.

    6. Re:What is a gravity wave? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How is that the wave distorts space in the same perpendicular directions as the two lasers are aligned? (disclaimer: I am not a Physicist)

    7. Re:What is a gravity wave? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 3, Informative

      They don't. If you get distortion in the exact direction of the perpendicular then it is hard to detect. The key to detection is that if it comes in at even a little angle then the two lasers will be distorted relative to each other.

    8. Re:What is a gravity wave? by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Imagine a circle as a gravity wave goes through it then the horizontal direction will get flattened and the vertical (direction of the wave) will get stretched out, and then the reverse.

      Does that mean the wave has a zone of negative gravity in the middle? Because it seems to me that any surface doing that series of stretching must be saddle-shaped - have negative curvature - in the middle. And, because mass and geometry of spacetime are connected, does that mean it must have negative mass as well?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    9. Re:What is a gravity wave? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      That's a good question! I think the answer is no- one won't get an area of functionally negative gravity, but I'm not completely sure why. That stretches my knowledge of GR.

    10. Re:What is a gravity wave? by ed1park · · Score: 1

      Basically it's a compression and elongation. A powerful enough source would tear you apart.

      Gravity wave LIGO documentary
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Here's a physical demonstration using a plastic mesh.
      https://youtu.be/iS33Hc1REjo?t...

    11. Re:What is a gravity wave? by ed1park · · Score: 1

      Here's an animated pic from Wikipedia:

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

    12. Re:What is a gravity wave? by nanospook · · Score: 1

      So when that wave passes through your mass, creating a disturbance in the space time, is it as if mass was added to your mass for the duration of the wave? You guys gave excellent examples, I'll have to think about this as soon as I finish paying my bills..

      --
      Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
  10. Never can have enough legos.... by avandesande · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Build some more and we can actually pinpoint the origin of the waves.

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  11. buh? there's non-Human scientists? by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Funny

    the first gravitational wave to be detected directly by human scientists

    I had to go read the linked story to make sure it wasn't typical /. submitter reading failure.
    Please, The Economist, do tell more, I think you buried the lead there.

    sigh. At least it's not a Forbes link.

    --

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

    1. Re:buh? there's non-Human scientists? by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      Its yet another proof of the global alien conspiracy. What else? They are among us. They control us. They will make earth their colony.

    2. Re:buh? there's non-Human scientists? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      yet another proof of the global alien conspiracy.

      The Trumpenians have invaded! They suck all our sour lemons dry, make our casinos cheesy, spread a virus that shrinks our babies' heads to lollipop size, steal Tony the Tiger's catch-phrases, and wear orange Tribbles on their heads.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:buh? there's non-Human scientists? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      It's a perfectly cromulent thing to say. We don't know if we're the first scientists to detect these things. We don't know that there are any non-human scientists, and the wording doesn't imply that we do.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    4. Re:buh? there's non-Human scientists? by fightinfilipino · · Score: 1

      the first gravitational wave to be detected directly by human scientists

      I had to go read the linked story to make sure it wasn't typical /. submitter reading failure. Please, The Economist, do tell more, I think you buried the lead there. sigh. At least it's not a Forbes link.

      elsewhere, dolphin scientists seen packing their starship, writing thank you notes to human populace.

  12. Next question: How do you weaponize gravity waves? by Ihlosi · · Score: 1

    Could they be used in a directed energy weapon (hey, it's a wave, so it could be focused), or emitted by some kind of bomb?

  13. What can't LEGO do? by Culture20 · · Score: 2

    Building blocks of the universe.

  14. And now the engineers... by Hussman32 · · Score: 1

    ...need to figure out a way to surf these waves.

    --
    "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
  15. Compare prediction to reality [Re:Cool!] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 3, Informative

    > Nobody actually ever thought that gravity waves wouldn't exist

    Which is precisely why this is such a non-important result. You don't learn much about the universe by demonstrating something everyone already knew is true. It would be much, MUCH more interesting if it didn't work.

    To the contrary. Now that we have detected gravitational waves, we can start comparing the predictions to the measured data. Until we had detected them, we couldn't compare theory to data. Now we we have a possibility to do so.

    That's why the MMX is cool, and this isn't.
    >But it's amazing that we can actually detect it.
    From a technology point of view, yes. From a theoretical perspective, not so much.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Compare prediction to reality [Re:Cool!] by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      It also showed that the gravitational wave detector is actually good for something. Till then I assumed LIGO would not detect anything in its whole service life. Now a newer detector is sort of guaranteed to not be useless either.

    2. Re:Compare prediction to reality [Re:Cool!] by dywolf · · Score: 1

      the four possibilities are:
      a) true positive: we detected it AND its a real result
      b) false positive: we detected it, but it's because of some yet unnoticed flaw
      c) true negative: we failed to detect it, and it's because it doesn't exist
      d) false negative: we failed to detect it, but it's because our detector is insufficient to the task

      They're fairly sure its A and not B, but further looking will help refine the uncertainty.
      but even if they failed to detect it (c or d) wouldn't be useless. again, with engineering and scientific analysis they can reasonably rule out D (or say we need something bigger to rule out b and d), and then at that point if C is the result, we've still learned something (something that means a whole host of new questions...)

      but the point is, if you never look in the first place you have no change of finding anything out at all, so you must look.
      and even b and d results would still tell us something about the nature of what we were looking for.

      so no, it was never useless.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  16. How do they figure out the distance/time by mark_reh · · Score: 1

    to the triggering event and the general direction it came from?

    1. Re:How do they figure out the distance/time by avandesande · · Score: 1

      the period/ magnitude of the wave tells them distance/time. They don't know the direction though- if they build more detectors they could use accurate timekeeping to find where the source is using a GPS style calculation.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    2. Re:How do they figure out the distance/time by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      LIGO is a pair of detectors. They know the (rough) direction to this event. It was in the southern sky.

    3. Re:How do they figure out the distance/time by avandesande · · Score: 1

      I think being able to map the events accurately enough for a telescope to look would be huge.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
  17. Gravity is not instantaneous by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are gravitational waves different from gravity? Because this article would have you believe that the speed at which they propagate is speed of light, where as gravity has instant effect AFAIK.

    Gravity does not have instantaneous effect.

    Nothing physical has instantaneous effect.

    In any case, if you're talking about the gravity of something just sitting unmoving, it doesn't really mean anything to say that the gravitational effect is instant, or delayed. It only makes sense to ask the question when something is accelerated away from sitting stationary, and in that case, the effect isn't instantaneous; the change in effect at an observer is at the speed of light.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Gravity is not instantaneous by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

      Meh indeed.

      The collapse of a wave function might be instantaneous (in the Copenhagen interpretation)... and it might have physical consequences... but the physical consequences are not instantaneous.

      --
      http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  18. Exciting, but by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    I'll wait for the peer review.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Exciting, but by ganv · · Score: 4, Informative

      It just came out in Physical Review Letters today: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...

    2. Re:Exciting, but by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Great - thanks for the link!

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    3. Re:Exciting, but by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Awesome! x1000 more interesting than the press release.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
  19. No by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2

    To create significant gravitational waves you need to accelerate extremely compact objects which have nuclear densities up to large fractions of the speed of light. If you can do that you already have a far more powerful weapon than any gravitational waves you might be able to get them to emit.

    1. Re:No by nsre · · Score: 1

      Do you mean neutron densities?

    2. Re:No by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      I mean the mass density of a typical nucleus. "Neutron densities", particularly when plural, would generally refer to the number of neutrons per unit volume.

  20. "Curved" space by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

    Yes. Einstein theorized that spacetime is curved around objects...

    More accurately, if you chose to define a geodesic as being the path taken by a light ray, then the space-time coordinate system defined by light rays in the presence of gravity obeys a non-Euclidean metric that is described by the metaphor "curved"-- by which we mean, it has the same geometry as a (Euclidean) curved surface in a higher-dimensional embedding space.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:"Curved" space by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      We're talking about the fabric of space-time being curved. That means your 3D space is essentially a hyperplane perpendicular to a particular point on a fourth spatial axis. The word "curved" obviously both does and doesn't have the same meaning.

      If you flex a 2D plane and draw a straight line across it, you get a curve because the plane is curved. This is trivially demonstrated by drawing a straight line on a sphere. What you just described is, essentially, a 3D space being curved in the same way, and then some bloke tries to travel across it in a straight line, and finds it takes the least energy to follow a curved path.

      (At least I think that's what you just described; I pinned a few things and just tried to visualize 4D space and see where things would naturally go if pushed. Humans should not visualize 4D space. Even if you could do it, you'd never be able to describe it; we use language to indicate experiences, and can't understand language if the words aren't pinned to experiences we've had.)

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re: "Curved" space by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      It's just big boned with genetics making it curved.

    3. Re: "Curved" space by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      Just like yo' mamma.

  21. Congrats. by Ecuador · · Score: 1

    Your post will be used as proof of the name confusion when LEGO goes after LIGO for trademark infringement.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  22. Gravitational waves by tylersoze · · Score: 1

    I guess I'll be the pedant here :) It's gravitational waves, the name gravity wave is already taken.

    1. Re:Gravitational waves by Athanasius · · Score: 1

      Exactly so: http://news.discovery.com/spac...

  23. Wave, so...what is... by mrego · · Score: 1

    So what's the frequency, Kenneth? Can they cancel like light, sound waves too? Surf's up.

  24. Re:Next question: How do you weaponize gravity wav by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

    We already have gravity bombs.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  25. I'll wait to celebrate by Holi · · Score: 1

    I'll wait until someone verifies their findings.

    --
    Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
  26. Re:Another feather in Einstein's hat by ganv · · Score: 1

    "The now-incipient field of gravitational waves astronomy is sure to make many glorious discoveries in this century." This is the reason this detection is so exciting. Until now, we had only quite indirect ways of detecting what was happening in exotic regions of space where very dense objects were orbiting at high speeds. Now we have direct experiments to tell us about these phenomena.

  27. Australia fires astro physicists by mattlmattlmattl · · Score: 1

    Australia Cuts 110 Astrophysics/Astronomy Scientist Jobs

    Because the science is settled there is no need for more basic research, the government says.

    Marshall wrote in the memo that gravity waves, and therefore, astronomy, is now settled science, and basic research is no longer needed.

    “The question has been answered, and the new question is what do we do about it, and how can we find solutions for gravity waves we will be living with,” he wrote.

  28. Other observations by PPH · · Score: 1

    Just wondering out loud here: It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation of such a large gravitational wave passing with things like earthquake frequencies/magnitudes. Or short term solar emissions or surface anomalies.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  29. Discovery paper by mdsolar · · Score: 1

    Abbot et al. is here: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...

    1. Re:Discovery paper by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      Abbott et al.

  30. Be Skeptical by Trachman · · Score: 1

    There are way too many assumptions and way too many inconsistencies with existing theoretical models.

    The link mentions few details: event took place 1.3 billion years ago. two holes .. the radius of 100km...

    First and foremost modern physics theorize that black hole does not have a dimension, and the size of the black hole cannot be measured using the usual three dimensional references. The radius of 100km is merely a Schwarzchild radius, representing a point of no return for the light.

    Secondly, it has been announced that gravitation is a wave which automatically means it is subject to the 300,000 km/s limit. Otherwise how would they know when exactly the event took place.

    I am not saying there are no gravitational effects. I am saying a confirmed chirp in dual interferometers is not enough to confirm weight, location, time and the nature of the event. I wish somebody would take time and explain the discover better. Hope somebody will provide not only good explanation, but also go over review process as well as peer review commentaries.

    Other than that, it only looks that LIGO scientific insitution had to invent something to justify their existence. Historically, there were many announcements, that were later recalled. Let's hope this one is for real.

    1. Re:Be Skeptical by ledow · · Score: 5, Informative

      Any science you can explain in a few sentences to a layman will be so full of holes as to be nothing more than hearsay and astrology.

      A big event, that would have created ripples that would arrive here roughly at the time of the experiment, happened. As we listened, at that time, we saw inconsistencies representative of just such a gravitational wave hitting the experiment. It's tiny, but above background noise and experimental error (it's mentioned elsewhere that this basically means 6-sigma certainty), and coincides with a particular event that we were able to "observe" (not literally) in other ways.

      The source of the wave barely matters. We detected gravitational fluxes that would otherwise be unexplained. That we are able to correlate them to one single event, that's just of the type of rare event that we predict might be able to cause such signals "loud" enough to be "heard" by us, and match up the timing means that it's the most likely explanation too.

      But more importantly - 100-year-old mathematics predicts some absolutely insane, bonkers things that - when we are finally able to look for them - turn out to be true. That's all science cares about.
      You can't just make up shit and then - in 100 years - several people invent an instrument that correlates perfectly to the shit you made up, several times, to the satisfaction of major scientific institutions unless - basically - you were absolutely spot-on correct all along.

      That's pretty much what happened. The Einstein field equations are fucking bonkers to understand, let alone try and solve the implications of them. And I'm a mathematician. But they predict stuff like this that we then find. When it came from barely matters. A simplification of the definition of "size" in a mass-media article doesn't matter at all (tell people black holes have no size, and they look at you like you're an idiot).

      So, no, it's not as bad as you make out.

    2. Re:Be Skeptical by ledow · · Score: 1

      Black holes warp space to the point that countless billions of planets can fit into a fairly normal "size" black hole.

      Therefore the concept of "measuring" a black hole can be a nonsense. Inside it is billions of large things. Outside it, it might be a fraction of a light year across. And yet all that matter is crushed under its gravity and becomes nearly a point mass.

      When your measuring system is reliant on getting a ruler and putting it somewhere, it all becomes a nonsense under space-time itself warping to the point of galaxies of objects fitting on the head of a pin, which from a distance just looks like a black hole in the middle of a galaxy.

      Actual scale here is variable, indeterminate, dependent on the observer, and - in a lot of cases - unknown.

    3. Re:Be Skeptical by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      It's possible to measure black holes by their Schwartzchild radii (sp?), which is a variant on measuring them by their masses. Exactly what happens inside the event horizon is not something we can observe.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  31. Re:Another feather in Einstein's hat by Deadstick · · Score: 1

    Maybe relativity will at last get somebody the Nobel...Einstein was screwed out of it.

  32. Physicist's commentary and original article by Soldrinero · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who are interested, the scientific journal has a companion article here. It describes the design and sensitivity of the experiment, as well as some of the context. There is also a link to the actual journal article to the right, but you may need institutional access to download it.

    --
    I would rather be killed by a terrorist than enslaved by my government.
  33. We can detect these using LEGO Ninjitsu by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Now help me assemble this space gravitational wave observatory using plastic blocks ...

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  34. Randall Monroe, please do the math for us. by Thud457 · · Score: 2

    I'm guessing you can't build a fusion reactor out of LEGOs.

    given enough of them you can.

    --

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

    1. Re:Randall Monroe, please do the math for us. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Easy. They're made out of hydrocarbons, so they've got lots of hydrogen. Put enough together so that they collapse into a very dense sphere due to their gravity, and the center will get really really hot as it continues to collapse until the radiation pressure from the fusion balances the gravitational collapse.

      I, however, am not going to pay for that many LEGOs.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  35. Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's sort of amusing here is that the Michelson-Morley experiment, which is EXACTLY what this experiment is, failed to detect Ether. Yet this experiment is actually detecting ether! it's not the ether distortion MM were looking for which is differences in some vaccum substance that supports electromagnetic wave propagation. Instead it is detecting gravity wiggles in in real matter. Yet those gravity wiggles traveled through vacuum too. And according to general relativity my understanding is that should have distorted the vaccuum too. Thus if MM had had a sufficiently sensitive interferometer they would have detected these and attributed them to Ether fluctuations!

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  36. Visuals? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Does anyone have a link to an actual plot of the signal, where one could (hopefully) see the wave pattern, or any pattern?

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Visuals? by ledow · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia's gravitational wave page does.

    2. Re:Visuals? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      This one?

      Someone got it loaded pretty quick. Interesting. Thanks.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:Visuals? by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Does anyone have a link to an actual plot of the signal, where one could (hopefully) see the wave pattern, or any pattern?

      The signal was just the difference in time one laser beam took to travel as opposed to a second laser beam.

      Hanford LIGO is located here so the local paper has more than many sites http://www.tri-cityherald.com/...
      Ours showed seven-thousands of a second after the one in Louisiana LIGO did.

  37. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We detected the electromagnetic ether a long time ago. Today we call it "the photon field." If we had a quantum field theory of gravity we'd call the gravity ether "the graviton field" but instead we settle for calling it spacetime.

  38. Well, they must be standing waves by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Otherwise all the most distant stars and anything viewed through a gravity lens should shimmer, or shimmy, or shake...

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re: Well, they must be standing waves by dothasmurfysmurf · · Score: 1

      Maybe they do, but we don't notice because the waves, passing through the area of gravitational lensing at C begin and end much too quickly for our eyes to notice.

  39. Hawking's party by goombah99 · · Score: 2

    I'll see you and your FTL at Steven Hawking's post-announced party last year.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:Hawking's party by N3wsByt3 · · Score: 1

      That was pretty funny, though it probably went over the heads of many. +1 funny!

      --
      --- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
  40. Re:Next question: How do you weaponize gravity wav by Khashishi · · Score: 1

    Yeah, just throw two black holes together next to what you want to destroy.

  41. Re:Dumb question, forgive me by Teun · · Score: 1

    Four dimensional.

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  42. Causality by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 2

    It's very difficult to reason about the universe without causality. Personally, I would rather not go there, the possible delights of science fiction notwithstanding.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  43. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 2

    No, the MM experiment was measuring the speed of light in different orientations. Just because both used interferometers does not mean that they are measuring the same thing. If the MM experiment were arbitrarily more precise they would not have detected any change in the speed of light regardless of the orientation of their device, and spacetime fluctuations would have been dismissed as noise, and not particularly significant noise at that.

    You are deeply confused about pre-Einsteinian theories of light and the purpose and significance of the MM experiment.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  44. Obligatory XKCD by Athanasius · · Score: 1

    He was quick off the mark with this one, probably had it prepared: https://xkcd.com/1642/

    1. Re:Obligatory XKCD by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

      The reason we haven't previously discovered alien life.

    2. Re:Obligatory XKCD by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

      A friend of mine posted a picture of flowers, so aliens would intercept it and understand our concept of beauty. I responded that since flowers are a plant's reproductive organs, they might just consider it porn.

  45. Einstein does not have a perfect track record. by mschaffer · · Score: 1

    Einstein does not have a perfect track record. His first marriage was a dud.

  46. Re:Dumb question, forgive me by ledow · · Score: 2

    Nope, sound waves don't either.

    Think of a giant rubber sheet with a ball bearing in every square inch. Squish the sheet and the balls in that part get closer together. Stretch it and they get further apart. Do both to the same sheet and you have a wave and the distance between them is half a wavelength. Repeat it regularly and you have a full, repeating wave of a certain wavelength.

    The ball bearings are sound-carrying particles in audio terms, and mass-bearing particles in gravity terms.

    Neither of them has "positive" or "negative" anything. They just further apart or closer together to each other.

    That we sometimes represent them as a line on a graph that goes below zero (closer than without the presence of sound / gravity) or above it (further apart than without the presence of sound / gravity) is a matter of interpretation, nothing to do with anything "negative" at all.

  47. Does this put a nail into by fredrated · · Score: 1

    the coffin of the holographic universe?

  48. Re:Speed of gravity? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

    It's not instantaneous, because the LIGO detectors saw a delay. You can't specifically say what the speed was because the delay depends on the speed and direction. But the detection is consistent with a wave travelling at the speed of light from a source in the southern sky.

  49. Amazing experimental achievement in physics by Fudge+Factor+3000 · · Score: 1

    LIGO measures differential distortions in the length of two 4 km arms. It needs to be able to distinguish changes in length at the level of one part in 10^21 to be able to detect these gravity waves. For comparison, it is able to measure a difference of distance between say here and the nearest star system 4 light years away to within the width of a human hair!!!

  50. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by goombah99 · · Score: 2

    Dude, all both of them detect is phase as a proxy for time delay at arrival. time delay can occur because things got shorter or things went faster. but the experiments are identical in what they actually measure.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  51. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by lgw · · Score: 2

    There's no difference between "change in speed of light", "change in distance", and "change in travel time for light". They're all the same thing. Don't both instruments detect very small changes in round-trip travel time for light, comparing one direction to the other?

    Sure then 1880s apparatus wasn't going to detect gravity waves, but that's just a matter of sensitivity of the instrument. We still call an electron microscope a microscope.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  52. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    They weren't going to find gravity waves because they weren't looking for gravity waves. Gravity waves would have been considered noise in their experiment, even if they had an arbitrarily precise machine, because that was not the thing they were trying to measure. That was the whole point of having a rotating interferometer. They were trying to detect a "preferred frame", and they would not have detected one no matter how precise their machine was because there is no such animal.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  53. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

    Yes MM were measuring the speed of light, they were using the motion of the Earth around the sun to see if it added/subtracted from to the speed of a light beam. They could show that their equipment was sensitive enough to detect a change with direction if there was one, that's why their results were so convincing . MM were testing what Maxwell had predicted, ie: the speed of light is a constant value regardless of relative motion, Maxwell's constant (and it's value) falls out of his equations, it's a physical constant in the same way as the strength of gravity, or the charge of an electron, is a physical constant. Since the speed of light is a physical constant, time and distance must vary in different reference frames, this was the insight that Einstein came up with. To be fair to Newton, he only had two stated assumption in his "Principia", one stated that "time is constant". Everyone just accepted that as fact until Albert took a very fast tram ride.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  54. Faster than Light? by neoRUR · · Score: 1

    So are they faster than light?

  55. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by lgw · · Score: 1

    Oh, perhaps. These were smart guys though, they might have done more than just dismiss the data as noise (I agree they wouldn't have thought it was ether).

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  56. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    No, they are identical in the type of instrument they used, not in what they were trying to measure. MM were trying to find a "preferred frame", to see if the speed of light varied with the orientation (and motion around the sun) of the detector. They would not have found that no matter what the qualities of their detector were because it does not exist, and if they had detected gravitational waves, they would have been considered noise for the purpose of that experiment. You're saying that two different uses of an interferometer constitute the same experiment. You are very much mistaken.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  57. What Einstein knew [Re: Cool!] by XXongo · · Score: 1

    The thing here is that to date Einstein has a perfect track record. Which is pretty remarkable.

    To date, everything they've ever tested says that the theory of relativity, as far as we've been able to investigate, hasn't shown any cracks.

    Well, except for the niggling one where it demands a completely different vacuum energy level than the similarly well-tested theories of Quantum Mechanics.

    But all the parts predicted by Einstein that have been tested have checked out. Quantum field theories predict high (or even infinite) values for vacuum energy... but those values aren't testable.

    Strangely, Einstein's theories has been proved right even when Einstein himself was wrong. His objection to modern quantum mechanics was, basically, if it were correct then these bizarre Einstein-Podalsky-Rosen ("EPR") effects would be real, and that was just too weird for him, it would be spukhafte Fernwirkung. Well, turns out he was wrong about it being wrong, but his calculation was right-- the EPR effects are real, exactly as he (along with Podalsky and Rosen) described. And they are foundational to quantum mechanics as we know it.

  58. Quantum thermodynamics by XXongo · · Score: 1

    It still follows basic thermodynamics once you break it down.

    No, it does not. Neither quantum mechanics nor the relativity theory have anything to do with thermo dynamics, basic or not.

    Huh? No, you can derive thermodynamics from quantum mechanical ensembles. (ref)

    (Doesn't have anything to do with vacuum energy, though. Thermodynamics really only deals with changes in energy. An energy level that is inherent in vacuum is just a constant that can just be subtracted out.)

    1. Re:Quantum thermodynamics by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Of course you can "drive thermodynamics" from some "quantum mechanical"

      That does not make both related ... and this: Thermodynamics really only deals with changes in energy. An energy level that is inherent in vacuum is just a constant that can just be subtracted out. ... is simply wrong :D

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  59. Aren't tides an example of a detection? by iplayfast · · Score: 1

    I'm confused. The tide is caused by the moon and earth pulling at each other. As they circle around each other, the water is rised. The water rises on the side facing the moon, and the side away from the moon, because of the centripetal force of the earth being pulled by the moon. HOWEVER, the backside doesn't rise as high as the front side, showing that the energy used to rise the water on the back side isn't as much as the energy used to raise the water on the front side, the difference must be the gravity (since energy can't be lost). Why isn't this proof of gravity waves, since the difference in those two heights can easily be plotted.

    YUP, I'm full of it.

    1. Re:Aren't tides an example of a detection? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Different thing entirely. To oversimplify, tides are because of stable gravitational fields acting on moving matter, while gravitational waves are fluctuations in the gravitational field itself.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  60. It helps to know what to look for by XXongo · · Score: 1

    Okay, there was some uncertainty over the what phenomena could cause gravity waves, but that still creates mostly the same in issue on the generation side.

    It pretty much took numerical simulations using supercomputers to be able to predict the gravitational wave signal from colliding black holes.

    Up until these results, the search for gravitational waves was more like "well, gravitational waves theoretically could exist, we're not sure what would cause them or how strong they'd be, but let's look, and if we see any, then we'll know."

    But, turns out, the earliest detectors were just way too insensitive to see these results.

    1. Re:It helps to know what to look for by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      It pretty much took numerical simulations using supercomputers to be able to predict the gravitational wave signal from colliding black holes.

      That's an interesting conjecture. Were pre-super-computer simulations off by orders of magnitudes, and/or had an error range orders of magnitudes? I'm not a physics expert.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:It helps to know what to look for by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Okay, that makes sense. But I imagine that some still made some very approximate calculations, and wonder if these early attempts were either very wrong, or if they simply felt that they were too imperfect to conclude that the course GW detection instruments of the day too course still to have a decent chance. Was there ever a sense that the early GW detectors were unlikely to catch anything (barring some completely unknown object type being discovered/detected)?

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  61. Everything is an art by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

    A long time friend of mine used to work as a garbage collector, we used to go fishing a lot on weekends. He summed up your observations with the words "everything we do more than once becomes an art". We decided that the art of fishing is having a good time regardless of what the fish are doing.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    1. Re:Everything is an art by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Did you learn how to catch fish efficiently, though?

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      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re: Everything is an art by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      You just "whooshed" on the meaning of life. Hard too. It's pretty pathetic.

      This guy just explained to you that the point of fishing isn't fishing, it's about the art of extracting enjoyment from life regardless of circumstances. Your reply showed you don't get it. At all.

      Efficiency is not enjoyment. It doesn't enrich. It doesn't produce. It is the antithesis of richness of experience. It is insectile, robotic, and inhuman. Trawlers that drag immense nets, indiscriminately scouring aquatic life from the water, are efficient. That's already been done, and the results are hideous and unsustainable. Explosives are very efficient for fishing. So is poison.

      Why catch fish efficiently when you can do it with joy and pleasure, or flair and gusto? Sorry to rant, but I get the feeling you are modeling life so much that you are missing out on what it is to live it.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    3. Re: Everything is an art by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Oh I get it. He just said, "... dah. Whatever."

      Efficiency is what reduces disease, poverty, and human suffering. Your experiences are limited by your ability to use your time efficiently; society's balance is limited by the efficiencies of its broad systems--economics, education, government, the like. Your inability to maximize the efficiency of your life limits your leisure time and the quality of your leisure time; while the inefficiencies in society means somebody else doesn't get leisure time, since they're too busy starving in the frozen wasteland we call a back alley mid-winter.

      Why catch fish efficiently when you can do it with joy and pleasure, or flair and gusto?

      Of course. I'm rich. I just sip my champagne, unzip my pants, and piss on the starving homeless with flair and gusto.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  62. Physics Question by avandesande · · Score: 1

    How far apart are the centers of the black holes when this event occurred? The physics and energies involved with such an event are mind-boggling....

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  63. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Khashishi · · Score: 1

    The Michelson-Morley experiment is a perfect example of why it is important to actually detect something we expect from theory to be true.

  64. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by SharpFang · · Score: 2

    They are different in what they were TRYING to measure. But they ACTUALLY measure the same thing.

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  65. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    Ether theory had huge issues even before the experiment. There are probably better examples of unexpected discoveries.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  66. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by SharpFang · · Score: 1

    Or simply the GP's point completely flew over your head. But you're so arrogant about that, and so confident in your infallibility that I'm not going to argue with you.

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  67. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    They weren't going to find gravity waves because they weren't looking for gravity waves.

    If they had seen gravity waves they would have had no idea what they were but would certainly have regarded them as important. The real reason they weren't going to find gravity waves is that their apparatus was insufficiently sensitive by orders of magnitude.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  68. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by SharpFang · · Score: 1

    Yeah, the point completely flew over your head.

    But let me bite: Rename 'space' to 'aether'. Apply special and general relativity rules normally; that kills the idea of preferred frame of reference - one important point where Michaelson and Morley were wrong. Anything else about aether still doesn't check out?

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  69. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    They would have seen gravitational waves as transient noise, in the same respect that passing vehicles and persons represented noise sources, and of far lesser magnitude. Without a physical framework suggesting that this noise was meaningful, there would have been no reason to suspect it was. Yes, they were intelligent fellows, but as far as I know, neither understood their experiments to mean that the aether did not exist, and continued to conduct experiments on the matter. I don't want to say exactly that they wouldn't have believed in gravitational waves if their hair was on fire due to that, but certainly in their famed experiment [a] they weren't looking for that, [b] it would have disturbed the thing they were looking for, and [c] they were not disposed to believe it even if they had found it. They were eminent and respectable scientists, their experiment was correct and well-founded, and they were dead wrong and no degree of accuracy could have changed that.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  70. Eureka! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    I wonder if there was a "eureka!" moment where a researcher looked at preliminary data and thought, "Holy shit, we've really got something!"

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  71. Re:Next question: How do you weaponize gravity wav by Ihlosi · · Score: 1
    Yeah, just throw two black holes together next to what you want to destroy.

    It takes too long if you have several galaxies that need to go because they are blocking your view.

  72. Why is no one asking the important question by bentcd · · Score: 1

    So.

    What is the timescale for putting a gravity wave sensor in my smartphone?

    I want this.

    I would happily pay $10 extra for my phone if it had a gravity wave sensor in it.

    --
    sigs are hazardous to your health
  73. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by SharpFang · · Score: 1

    A very lousy comparison implying red doesn't exist.

    Space has quite enough properties to be considered 'a medium'. Only our lack of ability to detect anything more 'voidy' keeps the insistence that it's to be treated as a void, lack of anything. In reality it can be warped, like a tensor field, it can carry quite a few other fields, even matter can spontaneously manifest out of it. In light of the increasing number of features that can be assigned to any (empty) point of space, insisting space can't be qualified as a kind of medium becomes pure stubbornness.

    Or - can light propagate through anything else than space?

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  74. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    They would have seen gravitational waves as transient noise...

    I seriously doubt that. Those dudes were pretty smart.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  75. Does the universe have a resonant frequency? by mark_reh · · Score: 1

    Will gravitational waves reflect from the boundaries and is it possible to have a resonant condition?
    Since gravitational waves move at the speed of light, and the universe is expanding at less than the speed of light (correct me if I'm wrong) the waves will eventually reach the boundaries. Will they be reflected?. With additional energy input from more black holes crashing into each other can a resonant condition occur where everything starts ringing?

  76. What would it be like to be close to this event? by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 2

    When these two black holes merged, three solar masses worth of matter got turned into pure energy, in the form of gravity waves. Compare that to a nuclear bomb, where a mass of about one pea gets turned into pure energy. It's hard to wrap my mind around the scale of this event. But adding to that problem is that this is not your ordinary explosion with a bright flash. So what would happen to objects in the vicinity of this gravity wave "explosion"? Would it tear apart our bodies? Would it destroy planets? Would everything heat up from the friction of relative motion? Or would these waves just pass through us without us noticing?

  77. Simplistic Analogy by DarthVain · · Score: 1

    OK, let me give this a try with a very simplistic analogy...

    We're standing in a very large pond. Way out in the middle of the pond, we can observe that a pebble was dropped into it. We believe it happened. We expect that that occurrence will create a small ripple. Using maths we calculate when that small ripple will travel from the point of occurrence to where it will eventually touch our leg and we can feel it. However we're not sure our legs are sensitive to notice the difference, so we attach a device to do so. Fast forward, at the expected time, our super sensitive leg device has indeed detected the small ripple to the exact parameters. Doing so means that:

    A) a wave was generated,
    B) the maths used to predict the travel of the wave from the point of pebble impact to leg have been confirmed, and
    C) having confirmed we can use said maths to accurately measure other such occurrences, perhaps ones that say happened behind us that we can't see, and
    D) advance the understanding of how the whole pond mechanics work in relation to other forces that we happen to be standing in...

    Am I very far off?

  78. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by SharpFang · · Score: 1

    So - electromagnetic field can exist without/outside space?

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  79. Almost - Ether vs LIGO by DrYak · · Score: 1

    There's no difference between "change in speed of light", "change in distance", and "change in travel time for light". They're all the same thing.

    More or less in broad details.

    Don't both instruments detect very small changes in round-trip travel time for light, comparing one direction to the other?

    Not exactly.
    To over simplify:
    - MM experiment was about measuring a clear and constant difference of speed of light that depends on the orientation of the two beams. (if there's any fluctuation, it should be noise and discarded. It's the average speed in each direction of space that is important).
    - LIGO experiment is about measuring a fluctuation of distance. It fluctuates around a set mean (because the speed of light is constant no matter which direction or travel speed), but as wave of space distorsion go through it tiny oscilliation might happen. (In other words, it *the noise* which is important. The mean speed should be constant no matter the direction.)

    In very broad details (actual physicists and historians are both going to laught at me) :

    Back in the 19th century, the theory of ether was that light was a pure wave (like sound waves, etc.) Like any wave it needs to travel inside a medium (e.g.: speech is a sound wave that travels through air - under the form of a compression wave of said air) (e.g.: ripples are surface displacement of water, etc.)
    As lights travels through space, it should mean that space isn't void. Instead there's a medium that can carry this wave (just like air carries sound, water carry ripples) except that medium should be much thinner and lighter than air, because everything behaves as if there was void between the planets.
    (Note: under this hypothesis, ether is just a simple substance/medium like anything else, just extremely light/thin).
    Now the question is: how would you test it?

    Well if stars roam around an universe filled with a medium called ether, that mean they move relative to the ether fluid.
    And depending on the relative motion of earth in ether, the speed at which the light wave are carried in this ether should look different between the direction of the ether flux (relative of us) and perpendicular to it.
    Think "doppler effect in water". Or think the distorted ripples caused by something travelling on the surface of water: as seen from the traveller's point of view, waves in front seem to move away slower (as the traveller catches up to them) whereas side way, the move away the usual speed.

    So ether could be proved by setting up an interferometer. Then as you rotate it around (thus aligning differently them beams. Which beam is along the traveling distance of earth through ether, and which beam is perpendicular), you'll notice a shift in the interferometer. You're detecting the speed of travel of planet Earth across the ether medium.

    Result of the experiment: Nothing. Silch. Nada. No matter how precise you measure, no matter how you orient the setup, *the speed of light is the same in all direction*. It's not direction dependent, it's not dependent on some flux of some "ether medium".
    Nothing of the variation that was expected, given the speed of travel of planet Earth through ether.

    A more precise instrument wouldn't have helped. The planet Earth travel rather fast around the sun, so the different of speed, though subbtle should definitely be noticeable.

    Now back to LIGO:
    Since the 19th century, the duality particle/wave is known (and has been proven by slit experiments, etc.).

    Special Relativity states (among other) that the law of physics are invariant. The speed of light in void is always 1*C. No matter the reference, no matter if you travel, etc. (Thus, although the result of MM where surprising given the ether model, its absolutely what's expected under special relativity. Zero surpise. Speed of light should be 1*C in vacuum, no matter how you orient your experiment regarding the orbit of our planet around the sum. Or the

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  80. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Space doesn't have a preferred reference frame. The M-M experiment was to find the preferred reference frame. The LIGO experiment assumed that there was no such reference frame, and detected gravitational waves that had nothing to do with any reference frame. The apparatus was similar, but what was being measured, and what the results would have meant is far different.

    If I may trot out an old joke, an amateur astronomer is looking at heavenly bodies when focusing on Saturn, and when focusing on the bathroom window of that cute redhead, and using the same apparatus, but is really doing different things.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  81. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    With equipment that was sufficiently precise, and that they knew to be sufficiently precise, and able to filter out transient noise, M-M would not have figured they detected gravitational waves. They would have uttered those well-known words that often herald great breakthroughs: "Hmmm, that's funny".

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  82. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Still, there's been a lot of neat stuff discovered when somebody had the idea "Let's just check to see if that thing we all know to be true actually is" or "Let's formalize this and see what we can do with it." There's also been a whole lot of times when those ideas just went nowhere, but that's science for you.

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  83. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by SharpFang · · Score: 1

    Did you just equate space to vacuum? Did you just imply transparent media are outside space?

    BTW, spacetime can be bent, compressed, stretched, it can be squeezed into a singularity. Is there any solid rule that states it can't, given the right conditions, have discontinuities?

    MM were looking for THE medium through which EM waves propagate. They made some completely wrong assumptions as to the expected nature of that medium. Yes, what they assumed it to be doesn't exist. Which doesn't mean the medium doesn't exist, merely that it's quite different than their expectations.

    It may be boiling down to a semantic argument - which doesn't mean the argument is invalid or wrong. Meanwhile refusing to accept an argument may be correct merely on basis that it may be semantic is outright wrong.

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  84. Is it just me... by persicom · · Score: 1

    .. Or do you keep thinking LEGOs were involved every time you read a headline about this?

  85. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by cwsumner · · Score: 1

    What people are trying to measure, and what they are actually detecting, can often be quite different.
    Looking for something else with the same equipment does not change the results, only their analysis of the data.

    For true science, you should not decide what you are looking for until after you have the data, otherwise you will cause errors and bias.
    P.S., yes your professors were wrong... 8-)

  86. nytimes has good a video presentation by NewYork · · Score: 1

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html?_r=0

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  87. Gravity waves vs gravitational waves by SpaceDave · · Score: 1

    For the pedants..

    "In physics, gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime which propagate as waves, travelling outward from the source." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    "In fluid dynamics, gravity waves are waves generated in a fluid medium or at the interface between two media when the force of gravity or buoyancy tries to restore equilibrium. An example of such an interface is that between the atmosphere and the ocean, which gives rise to wind waves." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  88. Obi Wan by mcswell · · Score: 1

    I have felt a great disturbance in the Force.

  89. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    For true science, you should not decide what you are looking for until after you have the data, otherwise you will cause errors and bias.

    Then how are scientists supposed to get anything done? There was a time when a lot of science could be done with stuff that a scientist could have built in his basement (they were also virtually all male in that period). You can't do that with physics nowadays. You need to construct big and expensive things to get results, and in order not to waste money all over the place you need to have some idea what to build. The CERN accelerator costs something like a billion years a year to operate. Should we build numerous random apparatuses that cost billions in the hope that one will find something?

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    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  90. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by cwsumner · · Score: 1

    That is the delemma that we have always had. When you start you don't actually know what you will find, no matter how much everyone thinks so. So we build what we can, as generally as we can, and see what happens. That's why they always start small, but in that field we are at least somewhat past that.

    Unfortunatly, people used to only working in areas where they can be sure of things expect to be sure of everything, even when no-one knows... 8-)

    (Spoken by someone who has worked in fields where an accuracy of one part in ten to the 17th is "approximate".)

  91. Re:Michelson-Morley were wrong. Ether exists by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    They were looking for a longer-term average, not specific short-term disturbances/changes. Maybe if their instruments were sensitive enough, they may have inadvertently spotted such waves, but that's not what they set out to find any more than Voyager was designed to find active Io volcanoes. (Galileo probe may have missed Europa's now-known plumes because mission planners didn't know to look.) It's often the case that you set out looking for X, but find Y instead.

    Whether the existence of waves implies "ether" or not is probably a tricky definition issue. If they didn't pre-define ether clearly enough, then arguments could perhaps be made both ways. It was a general notion at the time rather than a precisely defined phenomenon. It's hard to precisely define a phenomenon until AFTER you discover and study it.

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