Gravitational Waves

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/11/gravitational-waves-discovery-hailed-as-breakthrough-of-the-century

 

Mind = Blown

 

 

Edit : NSF live stream :

 

Edited February 11, 2016 by D4M0

The last 3 paragraphs are the most interesting:

 

 

  Quote

“Just think of radio waves, when radio waves were discovered we learned to communicate with them. Mobile communication is entirely reliant on radio waves. For astronomy, radio observations have probably told us more than anything else about the structure of the universe. Now we have gravitational waves we are going to have a whole new picture of the universe, of the stuff that doesn’t emit light – dark matter, black holes,” he said.

“For me the most exciting thing is we will literally be able to see the big bang. Using electromagnetic waves we cannot see further back than 400,000 years after the big bang. The early universe was opaque to light. It is not opaque to gravitational waves. It is completely transparent.

“So literally, by gathering gravitational waves we will be able to see exactly what happened at the initial singularity. The most weird and wonderful prediction of Einstein’s theory was that everything came out of a single event: the big bang singularity. And we will be able to see what happened.”

I tried to convey the wonder at this discovery to my collegues at work but they were merely accomodating; even tho I'm not a researcher, I'm quite amazed by this

Edited February 11, 2016 by pierlu

  On 2/11/2016 at 5:26 PM, Herr Jan said:

 

I was going to make a joke about new-wave/vaporwave/chillwave/gravitywave but this was a much better electronic music reference

I didn't see the first thread when I made my first post but... anyway. Yeah, this is huge news. I assume this is the first step towards developing IRL gravity guns and hoverboards...

 

Get on it science!

*counters*

 

So if the black holes were 1.3 billion light years away does that mean that the waves travel faster than light? And still doesn't violate Einstein's general relativity since it's not a particle?

Edited February 11, 2016 by Braintree

Edited February 11, 2016 by impotentwhitecapitalist

  On 2/11/2016 at 8:43 PM, goDel said:

 

Came here to post this. So good.

meanwhile in the universe donald trump

 

I can't even imagine how thrilled Gerald Donald must be today.

 

math/science is weird I have a distortion that raises to an imaginary power, like x^100i etc.. that actually makes a waveshape completely composed of sine waves no matter how much you draw on it/distort the signal (i think). waves dude

Edited February 11, 2016 by Ragnar

  On 2/11/2016 at 8:34 PM, Braintree said:

So if the black holes were 1.3 billion light years away does that mean that the waves travel faster than light? And still doesn't violate Einstein's general relativity since it's not a particle?

i don't think so...as far as i understand it, gravity propagates at the speed of light. the black holes collided a billion or whatever years ago and we are just witnessing it now.

gravitation is a godlike entity

a .. sentient presence

it lends itself to us

  On 2/11/2016 at 10:22 PM, BCM said:

 

  On 2/11/2016 at 8:34 PM, Braintree said:

So if the black holes were 1.3 billion light years away does that mean that the waves travel faster than light? And still doesn't violate Einstein's general relativity since it's not a particle?

i don't think so...as far as i understand it, gravity propagates at the speed of light. the black holes collided a billion or whatever years ago and we are just witnessing it now.

 

 

 

That was my other thought. That they chose a place in space and merely timed the disturbance.

 

However, as far as I understand Planck time at the point of the big bang, the universe itself was expanding much much faster than the speed of light (and continues to do so exponentially). So what is doing it? The Higgs field explains how things in our universe can move around since it acts as a medium and gives mass to particles, but what is propelling it? I would assume it's gravity. Also, since gravity isn't a particle and is merely a part of the "field" that everything else resides in, it wouldn't have to adhere to the same laws.

 

But I'm clearly out of my depth, so

it's a matter of time til these smart "scientists" prove that some dude predicted 9/11 in his dreams

i never get how they say they can 'see' the big bang or even right after it, if the light from it should have went out beyond everything tha was part of the big bang. the light from it should have went well out past us since the expansion of the universe since the big bang has been at a speed much less than light. also, i've seen places that said the big bang wasn't really a case of everything exploding outward from a tiny point, that it was more like an expansion of an already large area/mass. someone gave that as the reason for why you can see stuff from the big bang, because the size of the stuff that exploded was so big itself before the explosion that even at the speed of light, light from one side of that stuff could still take this long to reach us. ok, but i still keep seeing other science articles describing the big bang as an explosion where everything came out of a tiny space. wtf which is it.

Edited February 12, 2016 by MisterE

  On 2/12/2016 at 12:22 AM, MisterE said:

i never get how they say they can 'see' the big bang or even right after it, if the light from it should have went out beyond everything tha was part of the big bang. the light from it should have went well out past us since the expansion of the universe since the big bang has been at a speed much less than the big bang. also, i've seen places where scientists have said the big bang wasn't really a case of everything exploding outward from a tiny point, that it was more like an expansion of an already large area/mass. someone gave that as the reason for why you can see stuff from the big bang, because the size of the stuff that exploded was so big itself before the explosion that even at the speed of light, light from one side of that stuff could still take this long to reach us. ok, but i still keep seeing other science articles describing the big bang as an explosion where everything came out of a tiny space. wtf which is it.

Keep in mind I may be totally fucking wrong: Supposedly the early stages of the universe after the big bang were so dense and hot that light did not travel through at its normal rate, if at all. To my understanding, our earliest measurements of red-shifted light do not go back far enough. I think these new methods of measuring gravitational waves will allow us to 'see' back farther than ever before.

oh right i think i mightve heard that thing about light going slower back then too. could maybe explain it i guess, but i would think that after that phase where everything is so dense, youd still have what a few billion years where light from then/there is going outward at the speed of light, and the physical matter that makes up the universe is expanding out from far less than the speed of light. i dunno it just sounds wacky to me either way.

Edited February 12, 2016 by MisterE

If a black hole is able to keep light from escaping it, then the mass at the beginning of the universe would definitely keep it from moving at its current rate.