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Gravitational waves from black holes detected

Fallenangel said:
Gravitational waves from black holes detected - BBC

Scientists are claiming a stunning discovery in their quest to fully understand gravity.
They have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth. The international team says the first detection of these gravitational waves will usher in a new era for astronomy. It is the culmination of decades of searching and could ultimately offer a window on the Big Bang.

The research, by the Ligo Collaboration, has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters. The collaboration operates a number of labs around the world that fire lasers through long tunnels, trying to sense ripples in the fabric of space-time. Expected signals are extremely subtle, and disturb the machines, known as interferometers, by just fractions of the width of an atom.But the black hole merger was picked up by two widely separated LIGO facilities in the US.

"We have detected gravitational waves," David Reitze, executive director of the Ligo project, told journalists at a news conference in Washington DC.
"It's the first time the Universe has spoken to us through gravitational waves. Up until now, we've been deaf."




Fallen.
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That is just stunning.
 
calamity said:
Holy smokes. What does it take to think you know better than people with IQs in the high 100s who have studied this stuff for 40 years or more? THe arrogance of ignorance never ceases to amaze me.
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When you have been on internet discussion sites long enough, you are no longer surprised to see some posters who seem either to have severe psychiatric disorders or to be twelve-year-old boys trying their best to be obnoxious.
 
matchlight said:
When you have been on internet discussion sites long enough, you are no longer surprised to see some posters who seem either to have severe psychiatric disorders or to be twelve-year-old boys trying their best to be obnoxious.
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Which one are you?
 
FieldTheorist said:
No, quite the opposite. In quantum theories, radiation modes must be quantized, and "gravitational waves" is another way of saying "gravitational radiation." So combined with several theoretical arguments plus experiments like these, we can rest very assured that the graviton is real now and quantum gravity is necessary. It would take something really extraordinary (a very serious violation of quantum mechanics) in order to see how GR + very vanilla assumptions about quantum theory could fail. And it's very difficult to violate the laws of quantum mechanics, largely because they're so simple and at the same time very constraining.



Yeah, I dislike the term "wave/particle duality," because I think it's a misleading/antiquated description, but yes, you're correct that this is the gist of it.
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Thank you.
 
Heinrich said:
Not all science, no of course not. But there are different sciences. It is just that a some are plain wrong. Take this latest raving over space waves, for example. Nearly everybody does not care about this and cannot understand it. When articles have to be written in newspapers to explain it and they are incomprehensible to ordinary people then it is of interest to only a very tiny minority of people. This is not a problem as such. 99.999...% of people will move on to the next item and the few who find it fascinating can chat among themselves and feel superior to everyone else. That is fine too. No one is hurt. But, in answer to someone who is confused, when the so-called Big Bang theory is mentioned, well, that about discredits the whole thing. To hold onto a belief that all the observable matter in the universe was compressed (lol) into an atom one trillionth the size of a bird seed, no. If you believe that then you would believe anything. And then for someone who holds such a belief, almost religiously as an article of faith, makes them look dotty. Sorry.


Tchnology is great and to benefit from it no one has to believe that the world could ever have been compressed into a teeny weeny itsy bitsy atom. I am telling you, that is a joke.
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Are black holes incredible?
 
calamity said:
There is no name calling in saying the arrogance of ignorance.

When it comes to particle physics, the authority of particle physicists is worth appealing to.
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Oh come on you can't rely on experts to know things about the field they've worked in their whole lives. That's why when I'm sick I consult my local plumber. Common sense, dude.
 
Heinrich said:
For all I know, you are probably well practiced at ignoring people who disagree with you.
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I'm not ignoring you. I do not consider your opinions of science to be evidence. You ignored my posts about the Big Bang and black holes. If you are not interested then fair enough. Just don't expect us to take you seriously.
 
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Deuce said:
Oh come on you can't rely on experts to know things about the field they've worked in their whole lives. That's why when I'm sick I consult my local plumber. Common sense, dude.
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I go to my neighbor, with an office job like mine, for plumbing advice and consult my long-dead grandma's book of herbal remedies when sick. Doesn't everybody?
 
Deuce said:
Common sense got us things like a flat earth at the center of the universe, leeches as medical treatments, and the idea that a heavier-than-air machine could never fly.
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actually no those were claims of scientific fact at the time.

People declaring "common sense" over something they by their own admission don't understand is the height of arrogance. I don't understand how ones and zeroes become a computer operating system, common sense says you can't turn ones and zeroes into colors and sounds, therefore computers aren't possible.

Keep your common sense. I'll stick to the evidence. If you want to disprove the Big Bang Theory, you're going to need to understand it first.
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higgs pretty much shot the big bang down.
unless you just ignore that as well.

Big Bang theory could be debunked by Large Hadron Collider - Telegraph
 
Nilly said:
The difference between the size of a grape seed (10^-4m) and the point from which the big bang started from (10^-35m) is as great as the difference between that same grape seed and the size of the observable universe (10^27m) now.

You're off by a magnitude of 10^31 (100000000000000000000000000000000x times)
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the entropy levels required for that are considered by science to be impossible as well.
 
Heinrich said:
I'm sorry but you lost me there.
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Let me teach you a bit about GPS and relativity, then, as others have tried.

GPS relies on very, very precise timing. You're measuring distance from multiple satellites by timing the signal coming from them, and then calculating your position based on that information. (Quadrilateration, basically Triangulation except using four points of reference instead of three, and distance instead of angles)

That timing has to be so incredibly precise that they had to account for both Special Relativity and General Relativity in the calculations. Being in orbit, those satellites experience slightly less gravity than we do at the surface, and gravity bends time. This would have caused an error in timing calculations because the atomic clocks on the satellites would have been running at a slightly different pace than ours at the surface. Additionally, the satellite is orbiting at a fairly high speed, so the difference in movement between you on the ground and the satellite in orbit creates another time dilation effect, according to relativity.

Bending time is a strange concept to think about, but it's true. The effects aren't very large, we're talking a few millionths of a second per day difference for that satellite and you on the ground. Doesn't matter for pretty much anything you and I do. But a few millionths of a second is a big deal for a GPS satellite. Without correctly adjusting for these effects, GPS would not have worked.

So, GPS needs Relativity to be correct. It needs Einstein to be correct. The only other option is that Relativity is wrong but somehow still fits exactly what Einstein predicted.

Relativity also predicts the Singularity at the beginning of our universe. Because, well, math.
 
zyzygy said:
I'm not ignoring you. I do not consider your opinions of science to be evidence. You ignored my posts about the Big Bang and black holes. If you are not interested then fair enough. Just don't expect us to take you seriously.
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we have little information on how black holes operate.
they are still a large scientific mystery. the biggest issue is even if we shoot a probe at a black hole
it will be destroyed before we can get any useful information.

even if it were to survive to get anything useful whether or not it could
get back to us is something totally different.

all i know is i would not want to be in the area were 2 black holes are colliding.
the destruction level just on a gravitation field let alone energy output would be scary.
 
Deuce said:
Um, this article is purely speculative. Some scientists say it's possible they might detect something that might debunk the BBT.

Could is a key word, dude.
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here i thought you liked scientific fact yet you seem to only like that science with what you agree with.
hmmm

there is nothing speculative about it. it is simply a new theory that disproves something that you believe.
therefore you reject that. not a very good way to handle science at all.
 
ludin said:
here i thought you liked scientific fact yet you seem to only like that science with what you agree with.
hmmm

there is nothing speculative about it. it is simply a new theory that disproves something that you believe.
therefore you reject that. not a very good way to handle science at all.
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Dude. Could. The article says they could detect something. Not that they did.

This isn't how facts work. Aliens could be seen landing in Kentucky tomorrow, therefore it's a fact that aliens exist?
 
ludin said:
we have little information on how black holes operate.
they are still a large scientific mystery. the biggest issue is even if we shoot a probe at a black hole
it will be destroyed before we can get any useful information.

even if it were to survive to get anything useful whether or not it could
get back to us is something totally different.

all i know is i would not want to be in the area were 2 black holes are colliding.
the destruction level just on a gravitation field let alone energy output would be scary.
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I was merely pointing out that by Heinrich's logic black holes do not exist. He would class them as incredible objects.
 
ludin said:
here i thought you liked scientific fact yet you seem to only like that science with what you agree with.
hmmm

there is nothing speculative about it. it is simply a new theory that disproves something that you believe.
therefore you reject that. not a very good way to handle science at all.
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The article says could detect not did detect.
 
zyzygy said:
How so?
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From his first book a brief history in time hawking said.
If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size. On the other hand, if it had been greater by a part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form.

this has recently been supported by the new higgs boson theory.

Rodger penrose who is a friend of Hawking calculated the entropy levels for the big bang.

Roger Penrose, a famous British mathematician and a close friend of Stephen Hawking, wondered about this question and tried to calculate the probability of the initial entropy conditions of the Big Bang.

According to Penrose, the odds against such an occurrence were on the order of 10 to the power of 10123 to 1.

It is hard even to imagine what this number means. In math, the value 10^123 means 1 followed by 123 zeros. (This is, by the way, more than the total number of atoms [1079] believed to exist in the whole universe.) But Penrose's answer is vastly more than this: It requires 1 followed by 10^123 zeros.

Or consider: 103 means 1,000, a thousand. 10 to the 103 power is a number that has 1 followed by 1000 zeros. If there are six zeros, it's called a million; if nine, a billion; if twelve, a trillion and so on. There is not even a name for a number that has 1 followed by 10^123 zeros.
 
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