Gravitational waves discovered on 100th anniversary of Einstiens theory of relitivity

Dark Energy is a repulsion so I suppose you could look at it as the opposite of gravity. However, it is not the opposite in the sense of anti-gravity or anti-gravitons or, as you say, repulsions. The gravition, if it exists, is a Boson, and Boson's don't have anti-particles. To imagine that is to say there is anti-light, or negative mass. We don't have any evidence of negative mass or negative light. To be clear, darkness is the absence of light, not the opposite of light.

Presumably an anti-gravity wave or particle would involve negative mass, concentrated like normal mass is in a star, planet, galaxy, moon, etc. No negative mass has been observed and no elementary particle indicates negative mass is possible. Dark Energy is uniform throughout the universe so it's not like gravity.

 

That's quite impressive - where do you get your information from?

 

et al,

(QUESTIONs)

I need to go back to the basics here. It is almost like the scientist detected nothing. Normally, when we say "something was detected" that means that a sensor of some sort observed a change or an impact.

• What was the sensor sensitive to that we observed a change?

Normally, when we say a "wave" we mean that some medium was observed to conduct a cycle of change.

• What was the frequency of this wave? (All energy has a frequency characteristic.)

• What was the medium that we observed the wave in? (All mediums have a consistency; unless it is a particle which has mass.)

• Did we detect an actual wave? OR Did we actually observe a particle?

I'm just a bit confused as to the sensitivity of the detector, and what the detector sensed.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

I'm hardly an expert on any of this but I'll try to convey how these gravitational waves were detected.

The measuring instrument itself is abbreviated LIGO ( Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). It consists of two detectors, located in Louisiana and Washington (US).



Each detector forms a large L-shape, with arms made of concrete tubes 2.5 miles long. The inside of each tube is held at high vacuum. The experiment works by shining a laser down the arms, where the beam bounces off a movable mirror at the far end.

When a gravitational wave passes, it nudges the mirror, slightly shifting the position of the laser beam. By comparing the beams between the two arms, LIGO can spot the gravitational wave’s effect. LIGO is capable of measuring nudges to its mirror of about 10 to the minus 20th power meters, or about one ten-thousandth of the width of an atomic nucleus. These are highly sensitive instruments, in other words, capable of detecting gravitational waves.

 

What is negative mass?

That isn't even possible, if mass was negative it wouldn't exist...

Dark matter on the other hand - it's nothing more than the space between me and you in space.... It's what creates the vacuum...

 

Mostly published physics articles and books. I'm an engineer/scientist.

 

I didn't say it was possible but there's some interesting effects in equations if you use negative mass. Mathematically there's no reason not to. The Alcubierre Drive is one example. It's a faster-than-light drive which works mathematically within Einstein's field equations, but requires negative mass.

Nobody knows what Dark Matter is, but it does have gravitation and probably is made up of some unknown particle.

 

Well all matter has gravity, but the problem with negative matter - like a lot of theories is math - you cant just tag everything with a value and use math to draw a conclusion...

 

LIGO is basically a big inferometer, much like the famous Michelson-Morley experiment that proved there was no "aether" background and validated Special Relativity.

You have two big arms (see Herkdrivers pic above) You shine a light (a laser in this case) down one side and have a splitter in the middle. The splitter sends identical beams down each arm. The light goes through a detector, then down to mirrors on each end of the arm. The light is reflected back to the detector and recombined with the outgoing light. The detector is set up just so both light beams cancel. If the distance between the detector and mirror changes, the light beams no longer cancel and a signal is detected. It's much more complicated that, but that's the basics. I believe LIGO uses a photodiode as the instrument to capture the signal.

When a gravitational wave passes the length of one or both beams changes and a signal is detected. The apparatus is seismically isolated otherwise protected against earthquakes or vibrations causing a fake signal. Also, there are two of them, one in Washington and one in Louisiana and they both have to agree a gravitational wave was detected. There's another detector in Italy, called Virgo, and it detected the wave too.

Gravitational waves disturb space-time, so you can think of that as the medium if you wish.

The signal varied in frequency, from 35Hz to 250Hz, pretty slow but faster than seismic waves.

 

Sure you can. Whether that conclusion is valid is a different story. Almost all of General Relativity was done by math, not by experiment. It's one of the reason's Einstein is so revered. The existence of gravitational waves is a prime example, math predicted it but it took 100 years to verify it. Just to be clear there's nothing that predicts negative mass and negative mass would, not surprisingly, violate some fundamental laws of the universe.

 

I didn't know about the one in Italy.

Are the three detectors far enough apart to allow for getting useful directional information?

 

Sorry I was wrong about the one in Italy. It was off at the time of the wave, but the Virgo team is helping the LIGO team.

They did get some directional information as there was a slight delay between the two sites, but nothing definitive.

 

You ought to diversity into astrophysics and you'd have a lucrative job for life. The only qualifications you need are an evocative imagination and the gift of the gab then the world (or universe? ) will be your oyster.

 

10A, et al,

Thanks for the explanation.

With that frequency, humans should have been capable of hearing the wave directly; since the the audible hearing range is ≈ 20 to 20,000 Hz; the Gravity wave being at the low end of the human hearing capacity.

(COMMENT)

One more question set, then I'll drop back again out of sight and out of your hair.

(SIMPLE THOUGHT)

Just like a bed linen comes in "Bed Sheet Thread Count," the fabric of space must have something similar in a three-dimensional fashion (X, Y, Z, axis with a "time" component built-in to the fabric of space-time). I suspect that space-time must be almost fluidic in nature. This could be expressed either in terms of fluidic density [(mass per unit volume) or (specific gravity (SGliq)]. I don't know this, but deduce this with the thought that a Gravity Wave radiates in a spherical manner; as in all directions at once (not just vertically or horizontally). Normally, the laymen (like myself) tend to think (all things being otherwise equal) that frequencies between 35Hz to 250Hz would travel faster in water than air. Since the mass of a water molecule is almost half that of a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and pressure.

(QUESTIONs)

• Did this discovery reveal anything about the density of space-time?
• Does the wave change as it passes dense bodies in space?
• Does the wave diminish in pressure according to the inverse square law (similar to light)?
• Is the gravity wave subject to the doppler effect (red-blue shift)?

Thanks very much for your help in understand the nature of this discovery.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

Unfortunately we can't hear the wave, at least not directly. Somebody could put the waveform through an audio system and we could hear it I suppose. That would be interesting, maybe I'll see if I can do that.

The wave is too weak to hear. More importantly the wave isn't like a sound wave. In a sound wave air (normally) is compressed and retracted, and those little hairs in our ears are moved (a force is applied) and our nerves react to that. That's not the case with gravity waves. The distance between those little hairs will change, but they will not be pushed. It's space-time itself that changes, so there is no force to make those little hairs wiggle despite the distance change.

Like anything else that depends on waves, the shape of the wave depends on the source. Since we generally have big balls of mass (planets, stars, black holes) in our universe a gravitational wave will most likely look like a point source. Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, but can be slowed down in a strong gravitational field and even stopped say at the event horizon of a black hole. This is all theory, but it's presumed a very strong gravitational wave will pull at space-time so much that here would be a sort of opposition to it and the wave would slow down or diminish.

Space-time doesn't have a density in the normal sense. There is a stress density but that is different than density of matter. To explain that further requires some serious math. Einstein's field equations aren't for the faint of heart.

The wave can be changed as it passes through large gravitational fields. Bodies can be dense and small or not dense and big. What matters is their gravitational field, or if you prefer, how much they curve space-time.

Yes the energy decreases according to the inverse square law. Note that that is only true for point sources, or those situations that can be treated as point sources far away.

Yes, almost certainly a gravitational wave is subject to the doppler effect.

 

Don't forget to let us know if you do hear something - I can't wait to . . .

 

Meh, it was already done. http://www.space.com/31910-what-colliding-black-holes-sound-like-video.html

 

10A, cerberus, et al,

Once again, thanks for the time and patience.

(COMMENT)

I did review that video. Interesting; odd shape. Generally speaking, I expect to see the power of a wave up front, like a tidal wave. But it appears that this is an increasing ramp (not so much is amplitude) with the power in the last quarter of the wave's life (the power or energy it takes to increase the frequency). I think that as the frequency increases, the energy distribution would be different --- would go down. Of course, it is not displayed in Amplitude by Frequency (as in a spectrum analyzer). Since the event is recorded, I would expect later this year, for the Waveform Spectrum Analyzer on the Discovery Team to release more information (maybe a YouTube Video). I wonder if this release is a lower harmonic of a more complex center at a much higher frequency? Square waves and ramp waves have spectacular patterns when examined in spectrum [my favorite being the (sine x/x) the sharpe rasters it generates] (the reception of such would of course be a near sure sign of life). I hope the Discover Teams release more information as the examination of datum progresses.

Again, Many Thanks - Cia,
Back to the cave,
R

 

Gravity does not pull nor push.

Gravity is NOT A FORCE even if that is what most people have been taught as it is very difficult for a High School Teacher to fully explain what Gravity really is....as it is an EFFECT.

Gravity is generated by the warping of space-time by the Hadrons of Protons and Neutrons and within them the Quantum Particle/Wave Form knows as the Higgs-Boson and the Higgs Field this Quanta generates is responsible for giving all Hadrons MASS.

AboveAlpha

 

Of course.

But it is the Gravity Waves generated by the moon changing position around the Earth that drives the ocean tides and waves to a point as there are many issues specific to Hydrodynamics such as wind, pressure...etc.

AA

 

A Graviton which does not exist.....but let's say it existed.....would be a Quantum Particle/Wave Form just like an Electron.

In order for Electromagnetism to place two magnetic capable objects of different mass...we will use a ratio of Mass 2-1.....you would need 2 times the amount of Electrons to attract 2 times the mass at the same rate given everything else is equal.

Since Gravity is constant Universally specific to the Inverse Square Law of Gravity.....if a Graviton existed you would need 2 times the number of Gravitons to cause an object of 2 times the mass to fall at the same rate as an object 1 times the mass.

This proves that a Graviton cannot exist.

AA

 

Well we know that FORWARD TIME TRAVEL is possible because we have done it.

Our GPS Satellites internal clocks must be constantly updated due to Time Dilation.

Thus Forward Time Travel is possible.

Backwards Time Travel might be possible but we could not travel back to OUR Divergent Universal State of Reality.

An alternate Universal State would develop for this to avoid Paradox.

AA

 

This is so wrong I don't know where to begin?

The ONLY thing that can warp or bend Light is Gravity.

THE ONLY THING!!!

We can reflect light.

But we cannot warp it.

AA

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I really do what I am talking about.

Do a bit of reading on Gravity.

AA

 

Problem is Gravitons have been proven not to exist.

Dark Energy is not pushing nor pulling the galaxies.....it is creating Space-Time between them.

THAT...is a mind bender....but that is what is happening.

AA

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Earth one day will lose it's Moon as the moon orbits a tiny bit further away from Earth every day.

However it is possible our sun could expand into a Red Giant and vaporize all the inner planets and moons before that happens.

AA

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Dark Energy is NOT repulsive.

It is Space-Time EXPANSIVE.

Dark Energy EXPANDS the Space-Time between Galaxies.

It is not Quantum related.

AA

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Unfortunately he is wrong.

AA

 

You first have to understand that Gravity and Gravity Waves are NOT ENERGY.

It is an adjustment of Space-Time Universal Dimentionality due to Celestial Mechanics.

The actual Space-Time Dimentionality ergo DISTANCE CHANGES.

AboveAlpha