Gravity Waves and Advanced LIGO

[Ignacio]

It's not often you get a chance to become friends with Physicists doing pure research...particularly at a time there's potential for serious discovery. Get your inner geek on and listen to an interesting documentary about gravity waves, echos of Einstein and relativity, colliding black holes, and seriously cool many-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollar farkles.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p032v402

Most of the story takes place about 10 miles from where Warchild and I work, the guy interviewed mostly in the latter half is able to explain much of this stuff to even my math-challenged brain, and they're smack dab in the middle of a science run right now reaching out to 180+ million light years detection. Theirs a serious optimism they find something in the near future!

 

[Knifemaker]

Neat. My daughter worked at LIGO in WA for several years...I'll pass the link on to her.

 

[SouthernCruizer]

too complex for me...I'm still trying to prove my flat earth theory.

 

[BwanaDik]

Listen but no video, correct?

On my bucket list for somebody to discover before my end:

1) Gravity waves (or particles, for that matter (hahaha))

2) E.T. life

3) Dark matter

Then I can die happy

 

[ionbeam]

Time to grab the ol' hover board and go surf some of those gravity waves :lol:

We managed to smoke out the Higgs boson, it's about time that we out gravity waves. Einstein will rest peacefully when we confirm that he is once again right.

 

[Ignacio]

Listen but no video, correct?

Yes. While the one picture looks like it should be moving...it's just audio.

I found myself listening to it and Googling various stuff on LIGO. Seems they were even trying to figure them out back in Manhattan Project days.

You want a video of the Hanford LIGO...

gives you some more pictures.

 

[Knifemaker]

The audio link doesn't work for me..

So, have they detected anything yet? When my daughter left there they were dismantling the inferometer to redo it and make it even more sensitive. Guessing that's been done?

I jokingly told her once that it wouldn't work, because if gravitational waves cause space to stretch or contract they likely also stretch or shrink time...so even if the target is moved farther back on one leg ...it would still take the same amount of time for the laser to bounce back. (From our viewpoint)

 

[Ignacio]

So, have they detected anything yet? When my daughter left there they were dismantling the inferometer to redo it and make it even more sensitive. Guessing that's been done?

That's why it's called Advanced LIGO now....the regineered to these beefy 40kg chunks of glass hanging from massive aluminum structures via fused silica strands. The old system used wires and much smaller test masses.

And I think instead of using massive metal stuctures with springs to isolate the whole thing...they've integrated tiny piezo electric motors into the test masses to deflect on the fly as motion happens. This system was so sensitive they can tell when semis go by 5 miles away and whether their tires are balanced or not.

And I think the new system detects a wider range that include more sweet spots the predictions make.

O1 for aLIGO (or "Observation Run 1") is happening right now....measuring out to 80 million light years if I remember correctly. They're hoping (and optimistic) this run will be the one.

Sorry about the audio. Maybe try a different browser or computer.