RE: Brace yourselves for gravitational waves
February 21, 2016 at 5:10 pm
(This post was last modified: February 21, 2016 at 5:19 pm by Excited Penguin.)
I understand that one way in which they distinguish between local events and extragalactic ones is by having two detectors placed at a considerable distance one from another. Gravitational waves travel way faster than anything else that could produce those kinds of vibrations in those two detectors within such a restricted time frame.
Also Alex alluded earlier to the fact that they've already done this in a simulation and the real thing resembles it too much to be a coincidence.
Anything else involves highly technical stuff that you couldn't understand as easily at a lay person level, I imagine.
What people like you and me need to know is that the probability that they're right is almost 100% in this case - if I remember it correctly. Why that is, is way too complicated to explain in its entirety beyond what you read on the internet about it. You would have to actually achieve that level of expertise in that particular domain to fully understand it.
Also Alex alluded earlier to the fact that they've already done this in a simulation and the real thing resembles it too much to be a coincidence.
Anything else involves highly technical stuff that you couldn't understand as easily at a lay person level, I imagine.
What people like you and me need to know is that the probability that they're right is almost 100% in this case - if I remember it correctly. Why that is, is way too complicated to explain in its entirety beyond what you read on the internet about it. You would have to actually achieve that level of expertise in that particular domain to fully understand it.
