Gravity Waves Discovered

[soggycrow]

Physicists at the two LIGO facilities have announced the detection of gravity waves, as predicted by Einstein a hundred years ago. The source is the merger of two black holes about 1.3 million light years distant. It won't affect your corn flakes, but it's a really big deal in physics.

 

[bendizoid]

They must distort the very fabric of space time. I wonder how fast they move? Speed of light?

 

[soggycrow]

They must distort the very fabric of space time. I wonder how fast they move? Speed of light?

You are exactly right. Which means that these two black holes bumped heads 1.3 million years ago.

 

[Dave68124]

You are exactly right. Which means that these two black holes bumped heads 1.3 million years ago.

About two days before Sanders and Hillary were born.

 

[Aaron Cleavin]

Oops there goes Gravity
Back to relativity

Oh LIGO
oh oh oh oh oh LIGO!


(Earnt it's O (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) was really just an experiment until now)

 

[aiabx]

Also - gravitons (if they exist) are getting close to being massless. Very cool stuff!

 

[bendizoid]

It's interesting to try and think about the forces involved. Like a dancer spinning more rapidly as she brings her arms in, a black hole must spin faster and faster as it collapses to conserve momemtum until it approaches the speed of light, then throw in Gravity and centripetal force, the mind reels.

 

[soggycrow]

The apparatus (there are two) looks like a big honking Michelson interferometer.