Brace yourselves for gravitational waves

[Excited Penguin]

From that article I mentioned earlier,

One reason the Louisiana and Washington sites are located so far apart is that if both sites observe the same gravitational wave signal, at the same time, physicists can have some confidence they simply haven’t measured some other, more localized environmental vibration.

So there's absolutely no chance that this is what actually happened?

[Minimalist]

I'm bracing for the counter-attack.

[Angrboda]

Interesting news.  I wish I understood more of it.

[Alex K]

From that article I mentioned earlier,

One reason the Louisiana and Washington sites are located so far apart is that if both sites observe the same gravitational wave signal, at the same time, physicists can have some confidence they simply haven’t measured some other, more localized environmental vibration.

So there's absolutely no chance that this is what actually happened?

If you see the same signal with 7 millisecond delay in two detectors thousands of miles apart, there is nothing that can travel this fast except radio waves snd gravitational waves. Actually, I'm not sure anything can travel this fast I think because any signal can only go 2000 km in that time.

[TubbyTubby]

Presumably the 2 independent detector signals can indicate a direction of the event but how do we work out the distance to the black holes and how do we know it was in fact 2 black holes with specific masses?

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[Whateverist]

If it is true what rumours claim, what we will be shown on thursday's press conference will be absolutely spectacular - namely a collision and merger of two black holes until they reach their final state, all observed via gravitational waves. Now we have to wait....

Oh shit!  I am so bad at that.

[Excited Penguin]

Sigh, I'm going to read about physics all night long, aren't I. Better make some coffee then.

[Alex K]

Presumably the 2 independent detector signals can indicate a direction of the event but how do we work out the distance to the black holes and how do we know it was in fact 2 black holes with specific masses?

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Wife and I have been discussing this exact question over dinner just now They probably did fit the shape of the signal (which has features such as frequency, change in frequency, relative height of peaks) to their general relativity supercomputer simulation to fit the two masses - they hinted at that in their presentation. My guess is that from that comparison you get the radiated power, and knowing the theoretically derived power of the source and the size of the signal as measured on earth, you can derive the distance by calculating how much it has gotten weaker on the way, in this case 1.3 billion lightyears or so. From the time delay between the two detectors you get an approximate region in the sky from which it likely came (roughly the direction of one of the magellanic clouds, but of course much farther away)

[Alex K]

Interesting news.  I wish I understood more of it.

If you ask me I can ramble on about it at will

[TubbyTubby]

Presumably the 2 independent detector signals can indicate a direction of the event but how do we work out the distance to the black holes and how do we know it was in fact 2 black holes with specific masses?

Sent from my SM-G928F using Tapatalk

Wife and I have been discussing this exact question over dinner just now They probably did fit the shape of the signal (which has features such as frequency, change in frequency, relative height of peaks) to their general relativity supercomputer simulation to fit the two masses - they hinted at that in their presentation. My guess is that from that comparison you get the radiated power, and knowing the theoretically derived power of the source and the size of the signal as measured on earth, you can derive the distance by calculating how much it has gotten weaker on the way, in this case 1.3 billion lightyears or so. From the time delay between the two detectors you get an approximate region in the sky from which it likely came (roughly the direction of one of the magellanic clouds, but of course much farther away)

I would love to have dinner with you!

This sort of news spurs me on to get back into studying general relativity properly. I need to read more on this, such a small measurement leading specifically to a conclusion of 2 x 30 solar mass black holes blows my mind somewhat.

Interesting times for sure.

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