Gravitational waves

I know a lot of people on here like their science so in case anyone's missed this flying around various news websites there is going to be a 'big announcement' from the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) collaboration at 3:30pm on Thursday. http://www.ligo.org/news/media-advisory.php They are just calling it an update but there have been various leaked emails suggesting this will be the official announcement that gravitational waves have been detected for the first time and that the detection was a black hole - black hole merger. I believe the press conference will be streamed online if anyone wants to follow it, not quite sure where but presumably there'll be a link on the LIGO site tomorrow.

If this is correct it opens up an entirely new window for probing the universe, beyond the electromagnetic spectrum. :) http://www.nature.com/news/gravitati...tackle-1.19337

Next up, Gravity surfing?

Thanks for posting - caught part of an item on BBC Breakfast this morning regarding this, but the presenters had so dumbed it down (wasn't that hard for them) - I didn't pick up that waves had been detected.
"what do they look like?" - give me strength.

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Originally Posted by Lucio

Next up, Gravity surfing?

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pfff that's warped thinking ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyo4DFr4D4I I think this will be streaming the news if anyone fancies it, might want to disable the chat if you want to keep it suitable for work...

Hopefully this isn't a damp squib ;)

No, wasnt a damp one, they *have* detected Gravy Waves.

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Originally Posted by g8ina

No, wasnt a damp one, they *have* detected Gravy Waves.

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Gravy waves? Oh my! Is that why the skin also goes wrinkly?

mmmmmm Bisto

Gravy waves detected with a laser, some mirrors and a lot of paitence :)

looks like Alby was right... clever, mad-haired old German moustachio'd nutter that he was.

One question, if they are detecting the gravity waves from the collision of a black hole, which was occuring approximately 1 billion years ago, why did the gravity waves arrive at the sams time as the light?

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Originally Posted by Lucio

One question, if they are detecting the gravity waves from the collision of a black hole, which was occuring approximately 1 billion years ago, why did the gravity waves arrive at the sams time as the light?

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Because they travel at the speed of light - nothing slows them down or stops them.

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Originally Posted by Lucio

One question, if they are detecting the gravity waves from the collision of a black hole, which was occuring approximately 1 billion years ago, why did the gravity waves arrive at the sams time as the light?

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If there was an electromagnetic counterpart to the gravitational wave event it wasn't detected, so we don't know they arrived at the same time. But yes, that is what you would expect - as kalniel says the speed of light is a universal upper speed limit for all information, whether it's via gravitons, photons, neutrinos etc.

Just a side point on possible EM counterparts. LIGO do release 'triggers' to the astronomy community when they detect these events so people can quickly look for a flash with radio/optical/x-ray etc telescopes but the localisation on the sky from LIGO is terrible - hundreds of square degrees and no current telescopes have a field of view that wide with reasonable sensitivity. So people do look but would have to get lucky to find a counterpart. The direction of the gravitational waves is found from the time delay between the two LIGO detectors similar to the way that our hearing works...but just like with our hearing (or mine at least), you only get a rough idea of the direction. When we have a 3rd/4th LIGO style detector (there are plans for equivalent set-ups in Europe/Japan/India I believe) the triangulation from the time delays should be massively improved.

In the case of two black holes merging as was the case here, I don't believe an EM counterpart is expected from theory anyway as everything is still shrouded by the event horizon(s) the whole time. If they were neutron stars (hopefully soon they'll see some mergers with those too) you would expect EM counterparts.

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Originally Posted by g8ina

No, wasnt a damp one, they *have* detected Gravy Waves.

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It's those spill chockers again!

ah this was good to read on the 6 Feb ahead of the annoucment over at Ars tech http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/201...teins-ripples/
never knew there was a measurement, Such as sextillion LOL 1 sextillion meters long—1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters

I like the first picture:

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-conten...nt-980x629.jpg

There's one gate, pretty much in the middle of no-where, but someone has still managed to clatter into it and bend it :p

Would make a nice house for all the refugees :D ok ok My bad !"