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[Head of Vengarl]

A good post from the "Explain Like I'm 5" subreddit:

ELI5: Why is today's announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves important, and what are the ramifications?

Astrokiwi: Two big things!

Firstly, General Relativity has always predicted that gravitational waves should exist. However, they are very weak, and even the most sensitive detectors should only detect the most dramatic ones - the "chirp" of gravitational waves that comes from the merger of two neutron stars, or even better, two black holes.

Recently, the LIGO detectors have been upgraded so that they finally have the sensitivity to detect the strongest of gravitational waves. And a few months ago, both sets of detectors (one in Louisiana, one in Washington state) detected a chirp of gravitational waves, fitting exactly the pattern of frequencies you'd expect from the merger of two black holes about a billion light years away with a mass of about 30x our Sun each.

This detection is a massive confirmation of General Relativity. It would be worrying if we didn't detect anything, but this really confirms that our understanding of gravity and the universe is correct.

Secondly, this opens up an entirely new field of observational astronomy. Astronomy works mostly through telescopes that observe different types of light waves - visible light, infrared, x-rays, radio waves, etc. But gravitational waves are an entirely different thing, and they give us a wholly new point of view on the universe, letting us see things we couldn't see otherwise.

For example, something that's 30x the mass of our Sun is a pretty small object to see at a distance of a billion light years! Black holes are also really really small (these are like 90 km across). So we detected something less than 100 km across that was a billion light years away! And that's something that would be pretty much impossible to do with any other current method.

It really is a wholly new window into the universe.

Lasers are always the key.

 

[Prologue]

I just want faster than light travel and space ships. Is that so hard to ask for?

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

We were discussing this in class today. It's mindblowing.

 

[Jenov]

Wow! Can't wait to see what they'll discover with this

 

[Dryk]

Stuff like this makes me question my choice of major. Perhaps I should take up physics as a possible career.

You think you've got it bad, three of my friends are co-authors on that paper

 

[Roc]

i still don't quite understand how a dude can, using the power of his imagination in some random office with nothign but a pen and paper, can come up with this stuff.

like how even

Well it helps that he was one of the smartest men to ever live.

 

[MogCakes]

You think you've got it bad, three of my friends are co-authors on that paper

That's actually really cool. I need more friends who are into the cerebral

 

[nOoblet16]

Basically they've been sitting on this data since last september but all this time they were ruling out other possibilities to confirm this.

 

[hoola]

So do these waves travel faster, slower or the same speed as light?

 

[Concept17]

Looking forward to NDT speak about it for all us laymans. I get the gist, but a more thorough understanding is needed.

 

[FunkyDealer]

They could just be lying to continue getting payed, and nobody would know the difference. :-/

 

[Sawneeks]

So do these waves travel faster, slower or the same speed as light?

Been reading up on it and it seems to travel at the speed of light and it is not impeded by mass. Meaning it can travel through solid objects and not lose speed.

Don't quote me on it though, I understand maybe 10% of this stuff.

 

[jchap]

The paper was very well written. Great presentation of the data as well. What was most incredible to me was that the energy in the radiated waves was 3 solar mass c^2!

 

[bsp]

They could just be lying to continue getting payed, and nobody would know the difference. :-/

The 1000 scientists working on the project + the millions in the scientific community now affirming this would know.

 

[Aikidoka]

I guess I should point out that Hulse and Taylor received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993 for providing strong evidence for gravitational waves by monitoring a binary star system and reaffirming general relativity.

So, this discovery isn't exciting so much because we now know that they exist (frankly it wouldn't make sense for them not to exist), but because of our ability to directly see the waveform of a gravitational. Personally, this is exciting for two main reasons: Gravitational wave signals could potentially provide insight into determiningg the nuclear equation of state and confirm a model for dark energy. Although, it may be a while till the detectors are sensitive enough to detect signals from neutron stars.

Been reading up on it and it seems to travel at the speed of light and it is not impeded by mass. Meaning it can travel through solid objects and not lose speed.

Don't quote me on it though, I understand maybe 10% of this stuff.

Well, we naturally expect them to travel at the speed of light. However, if they do travel slower than the speed of light, then that means general relativity could potentially explain dark energy. From a quantum point of view, traveling a speed of light means the graviton is massless, slower means it has some small mass.

 

[Always-honest]

Buuuuuullllshit!

Spoiler

Fucking awsome

 

[Escape Goat]

Whats this about Einstein's nipples?

 

[C0unter]

"Until this moment, we had our eyes on the sky and we couldn't hear the music," said Columbia University astrophysicist Szabolcs Marka, a member of the discovery team. "The skies will never be the same."

"The sky and the cosmos are one."

Really cool stuff.

 

[RankoSD]

For those who want a better explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXlg3cr-q44

 

[Skux]

By the time those ripples get to us on Earth, they're tiny (around a billionth of the diameter of an atom), which is why scientists have struggled for so many years to find them.

This just boggles my mind. How can you even comprehend something that small, let alone measure it.

So do these waves travel faster, slower or the same speed as light?

They travel at the speed of light. A Redditor stated that just like how light takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth from the sun, so does gravity. If the sun suddenly disappeared, Earth's orbit would stay the same for 8 minutes as the gravitational effect "travelled" to Earth.

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

Lol, I remember having an argument about gravity waves on another forum with someone a few years ago. The person didn't believe they exist.
Will go back now for my "I told you so"-dance.

 

[Vorheez]

i still don't quite understand how a dude can, using the power of his imagination in some random office with nothign but a pen and paper, can come up with this stuff.

like how even

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

-Isaac Newton

 

[The Technomancer]

So do these waves travel faster, slower or the same speed as light?

At the speed of light. The name is a bit misleading, its actually "the speed of anything massless"

 

[Air]

That's good. Looks like a lot of good information about the universe can come from measuring and testing these waves.

Go Einstein.

 

[FunkyDealer]

The 1000 scientists working on the project + the millions in the scientific community now affirming this would know.

The 1000 scientists would cover it up to get payed and the other millions was already accepting of gravity waves existence due to theoretical work.

I mean, electricity is everyday witchcraft, but we all accept it as science because someone told us to.

 

[Dryk]

The 1000 scientists would cover it up to get payed and the other millions was already accepting of gravity waves existence due to theoretical work.

How dare you question their integrity. They poured over that data for months to make sure that it was real. People have suffered, relationships have died because of this research.

 

[_Ryo_]

These aren't the kind of waves that could be bent or distorted are they? If they could, what would be the effect?

 

[Doge]

The things we can see!

 

[tr00per]

For those who want a better explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXlg3cr-q44

Fucking. Science.

Math and shit.


And I'm just sitting here trying to figure out what I want to eat.

 

[Amir0x]

For those who want a better explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXlg3cr-q44

I love the magnificence of the beautiful coincidence that we were here to build the equipment necessary to detect that specific gravity ripple that begun its journey 1.3 billion years ago when two black holes collided. The way he put it at the end of the video was just perfect.

 

[chrisPjelly]

Hmm.. I think the name Einstein's gravity hamon sounds better tho

 

[bwahhhhh]

I get that this is a fantastic breakthrough and now means we have the capacity to measure something we couldn't before - but... what does this mean for science applications? What can they do NOW that they did this that was not possible before? Is this just like the higgs boson discovery where all it did was prove old science theories correct? Are there any practical applications this could have that could affect the world as a whole or does this only impact the scientific community?

no practical applications (that directly benefit us) that I can think of, but i think the potential for future discoveries now that we can detect (and likely refine our methods of detection) gravitons is much greater than for detecting the higgs boson. (ie, potential for detecting incredibly huge masses that have no light sources/stars around them, and therefore perhaps a better understanding how the universe is structured)

but as with most discoveries like this, it'll be new things we discover due to this that we DON'T expect that will have a huge impact

 

[Jenov]

But... can it prove that the earth is not flat?

 

[Xe4]

I wouldn't put this as huge of a deal as some, cause we've already "detected" gravity waves before, but this is huuge. Up there with the Higgs Boson discovery and discovwring neutrinos havr mass for sure, maybe even a bit bigger.

 

[Mindlog]

yeah i dont know what any of this means. tell me how this will help us understand the universe.

Greene breaks it down in this three minute video.

 

[Zocano]

In a really layman way, this is effectively discovering gravity, right? Not the concept that Newton theorized but real physical evidence, yes?

 

[adamsappel]

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

-Isaac Newton

"If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs."

-Murray Gell-Mann

 

[Elfforkusu]

In a really layman way, this is effectively discovering gravity, right? Not the concept that Newton theorized but real physical evidence, yes?

To some extent, yeah.

We've always been able to measure its effects, but never to measure the actual distortion of time and space.

E: I need to clarify, the real-time distortion. Relativistic effects have been a fact of life for GPS satellites forever

 

[VariantX]

It's been an interesting past several months for science

-From fusion reactors becoming more of a real possibility in the future
-getting clear images of Pluto
-the possibility of our solar system having one or more planets outside of Pluto's orbit
-now I guess we confirmed a prediction Einstein made a long time ago because our tech finally allowed us to properly test it.

 

[Dryk]

-now I guess we confirmed a prediction Einstein made a long time ago because our tech finally allowed us to properly test it.

Experimental physics is so complex nowadays that entire fields spring up between theory and experiment. It's pretty crazy.

 

[Sibylus]

Still running a major head-high at the thought that we have direct measurement of gravitational waves, something none of us were ever guaranteed of ever seeing in our lifetimes. I've been having chills all day.

 

[Vorheez]

"If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs."

-Murray Gell-Mann

Bahaha brilliant! I love this.

 

[akira28]

i heard a billion year old bloop that was the fabric of reality going "woah-ohh"...

sublime.

and just think when we start pumping this stuff into our brain implants.

 

[hateradio]

:] ~ ~ ~ [ ~ : ~

Emotiripple

 

[Zekes!]

Yeah...well, how is this going to get the new Yeezy to release faster?

Spoiler

Real talk, that's awesome. I was just up in the kitchen grabbing some cereal and some dude on the news was trying to explain how this works, and I didn't really pay any mind to it, haha.

 

[chaosblade]

The part I don't get is how they can determine the source of a gravitational wave with that method. It seems like tons of things would be causing them all the time all over the place (relatively).

Will watch the better explanation video, maybe that covers it in a way that won't leave me staring into space and drooling.

 

[Kevtones]

This seems like it might be one of the bigger breakthroughs of the 21st century.

 

[Dryk]

The part I don't get is how they can determine the source of a gravitational wave with that method. It seems like tons of things would be causing them all the time all over the place (relatively).

It's basically an exact match to the predicted wave for a black hole merger. As for location, that's why they're building a network of detectors, so they can use them for source localisation.

 

[m3k]

This is fantastic! Thanks to the posts with videos!

 

[chaosblade]

It's basically an exact match to the predicted wave for a black hole merger. As for location, that's why they're building a network of detectors, so they can use them for source localisation.

I can see how that could work for detecting something from a single source and determining the location based on the very tiny difference in time when each detector detects something. (Like the black hole example)

I don't see how it could balance multiple sources or function as a "gravitational telescope" like some have mentioned (i.e., seeing beyond the cosmic background radiation).

Not doubting it works. I just don't really understand the intricacies.