Computer Simulations Point To the Source of Gravitational Waves (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: On February 11th, scientists at the LIGO observatory made history when they announced the detection of the first gravitational waves. A new study says the gravitational waves likely came from two massive suns that formed about 12 billion years ago, or two billion years after the Big Bang. The researcher's calculations have been published today in the journal Nature, and were determined by running a complex simulation called the Synthetic Universe: a computer model that simulates how the Universe may have evolved since the start of the Big Bang. The simulation even includes a synthetic LIGO detector to determine the types of objects that the observatory would detect over time. The Synthetic Universe can also make predictions as it includes a mock-LIGO to chronologically sync when we detected the waves. If the model is correct, we should see LIGO pick up to 60 detections when it begins its next observation run this fall. It could hear up to 1,000 detections annually at its peak sensitivity. The lead study author Chris Belczynski speculates specifically the size of black hole mergers that the LIGO should be able to detect from gravitational waves, a combined mass between 20 and 80 times the mass of our sun, indicating that they're likely from soon after the Big Bang when stars had lower metal content and formed proportionately larger black holes. His model suggests that the ones that collided to make these gravitational waves were stars that formed 12 billion years ago, became black holes 5 million years later, and then merged 10.3 billion years after that.

Comments

Re:Practical value?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Fucking your Mom.
2) Explaining Mercury's orbit.

Simulations - Program them to agree with you

[BitZtream]

I love when they make up the rules, then tweak the numbers/simulation until they get proof of what they want to prove.

Seriously, when you make up the math to prove your point on the fly (which is what all theoretical physics does) its not impressive for the simulation to agree with your prediction, you programed it that way!

Thats like calling the game Prey a simulator and proof we can make anti-gravity devices.