(February 12, 2016 at 10:26 am)Alex K Wrote: The "how" goes like this in a simplified version: you arrange the laser light waves coming back from the two arms to exactly cancel at the point back in the middle where your light sensor sits - the peaks of one exactly meet the troughs of the other and no laser light hits the sensor. If one arm gets slightly shorter or longer, one of the waves will be shifted ever so slightly because it had to travel further, the peaks don't quite meet the troughs of the other returning laser wave and the cancellation will not be perfect any more->light reaches the sensor and you see a signal.
The mathematically complex part is to properly understand why grav waves change the length of the arms as measured by a light wave.
It seems to me like light behaves very strangely in this scenario. So I think I was right, I'd have to actually study physics to understand how this process works. I understood what you said but only at a very superficial level.
But also, it seems like you're saying the more important thing to understand is the mathematics of it all, not how light is tested in this way. Ok, I can get behind that. Thanks.
