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Brace yourselves for gravitational waves
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 (February 11, 2016 at 5:18 pm)Alex K Wrote: Note also the 10^-21 amplitude. This means that the length of the 4km arms changed by less than 10^-17 meters. That's way smaller than a proton. Yeah, the news on the radio said 1/1000th the diameter of a proton. The fact that we can make such a sensitive instrument is, to me, as amazing as the fact that we can detect an occurrence 1.3 billion ly away. As Freeman Dyson said, "We are the Universe, pondering itself." (February 12, 2016 at 12:12 am)vorlon13 Wrote: Every atom in our galaxy is radiating vanishingly tiny tiny tiny tiny (add about 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 more tinys) amounts of gravitational radiation as they spin around in the Milky Way. Looks like everything gets sucked up eventually in the central black hole, digested, and then ever so slowly radiated away into a vast cold dark and empty dead universe as Hawking Radiation. But -- but -- Gawd -- 
God made all of that cosmic death for us! How special are we!?!?!
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---  RE: Brace yourselves for gravitational waves
February 12, 2016 at 4:22 am
(This post was last modified: February 12, 2016 at 4:22 am by Alex K.)
(February 12, 2016 at 12:02 am)vorlon13 Wrote: You're mostly transparent. Yeah, transparent seems appropriate. You probably could get hit by a nuke's worth of gravitational radiation and not even feel an itch. Space is so stiff that you need a huge amount of energy to bend it just by a minuscule amount.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
Kevin! From virtual universes r us, you there?
I warned you last time about fixing the sandbox algorithm when they started scratching with the higgs! (Higgs, I know, hilarious). Anyway, They're making another breakthrough now! One more breakthrough and they'll discover all the pretty Green matrix letters come scrambling down. It's year 2347, please don't restore the program back to 2016! What's that, the tenth time now! Hurry up and fix your bugs, will ya! I want to retire one day...
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
ig,
I don't know what you're talking about, all I see is blondes and brunettes..
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
Now tell me about your bronze age books, your fat guy statues, your multiple armed deities.
RE: Brace yourselves for gravitational waves
February 12, 2016 at 6:53 am
(This post was last modified: February 12, 2016 at 6:58 am by Alex K.)
(February 12, 2016 at 2:17 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:(February 11, 2016 at 5:18 pm)Alex K Wrote: Note also the 10^-21 amplitude. This means that the length of the 4km arms changed by less than 10^-17 meters. That's way smaller than a proton. Yes, 1/1000 of a proton seems crazy. That corresponds to a resolution rivalling particle colliders, but without investing any energy. The key is (this is my guess) using the uncertainty principle to your advantage by taking a - compared to an LHC collision - extremely long time to do the measurement, by sending lots of coherent laser photons along the same path. This way you get a super precise length measure without having to drain a whole powerplant. still a crass violation of my physics intuition.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
Correct me if I am wrong, but this type of measuring really isn't that different than how they measure glacier movement or plate tectonics in principle?
(February 12, 2016 at 6:58 am)Brian37 Wrote: Correct me if I am wrong, but this type of measuring really isn't that different than how they measure glacier movement or plate tectonics in principle? I dunno. How do they measure plate tectonics?
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
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