LIGO Scientists Make First-Ever Observation of Gravity Waves

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Second Gravitational Wave Detected From Ancient Black Hole Collision (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @11:30PM from the ripples-in-the-fabric-of-spacetime dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Physicists have detected ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were set in motion by the collision of two black holes far across the universe more than a billion years ago. The event marks only the second time that scientists have spotted gravitational waves, the tenuous stretching and squeezing of spacetime predicted by Einstein more than a century ago. The faint signal received by the twin instruments of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US revealed two black holes circling one another 27 times before finally smashing together at half the speed of light. The cataclysmic event saw the black holes, one eight times more massive than the sun, the other 14 times more massive, merge into one about 21 times heavier than the sun. In the process, energy equivalent to the mass of the sun radiated into space as gravitational waves. Writing in the journal Physical Review Letters on Wednesday, the LIGO team describes how a second rush of gravitational waves showed up in their instrument a few months after the first, at 3.38am UK time on Boxing Day morning 2015. An automatic search detected the signals and emailed the LIGO scientists within minutes to alert them. The latest signals arrived at the Livingston detector 1.1milliseconds before they hit the Hanford detector, allowing scientists on the team to roughly work out the position of the collision in the sky. In February, LIGO scientists officially announced the first-ever observation of gravity waves. nasa news physics

→ FBI Can Access Hundreds of Millions of Face Recognition Photos It's Official: LIGO Scientists Make First-Ever Observation of Gravity Waves Submission: Second Gravitational Wave Detected From Ancient Black Hole Collision Software Industry Has $1 Trillion Economic Impact In US Second Gravitational Wave Detected From Ancient Black Hole Collision 29 More | Reply Login Second Gravitational Wave Detected From Ancient Black Hole Collision

Post Load All Comments S10e aFruchll 17239 A Cbbomremvieantetsd L1o7g H Iind/dCerneate an Account C/Soemaments Filter: AScllore: I5nsightful I4nformative I3nteresting F2unny 1The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. R0 e:ALIENS. (Score:5, Funny) b-1y MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @11:55PM (#52326841) I2 9tr Miedo rbeu |i lRdeinpgly a L soegnisnor that detects gravity but in all my bench-tests it just kept pointing at your mom. Reply to This Parent Share tNwiicttkenra fmacee:b ook linkedin FPlaasgs awso Irnda:p 6p-r2o0p rcihaateracters long Public Terminal Re:ALIENS. (Score:4, Funny) by PLoopge IRn atz o F(o 9rg6o5t9 y4o7u r) poanss Twhourdr?sday June 16, 2016 @12:04AM (#52326881) Journal I tried building a sensor that detects gravity but in all my bench-tests it just kept pointing at your mom. Close FYI, your dick is not a gravity detecting sensor. Close Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate

Re: (Score:1) by Captain Splendid ( 673276 ) It is when it's got so much mass!

Re: (Score:3, Informative) by Khyber ( 864651 ) Correction: It must be very tiny to be sensitive enough to accurately detect such distant large masses like GP's mom.

Re: (Score:1) by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) Insufficient vibration insulation.

Re: (Score:2) by T.E.D. ( 34228 ) I bet you are by far the best Dozens player in the laboratory.

Re: (Score:3) by Lorens ( 597774 ) In the David Weber's "Honor Harrington" universe he uses gravity waves. His gravity waves are faster than light (cue interesting plot details, of course), but the real ones detected by LIGO seem to propagate at something more on the order of 0.01 c. Does someone have a more exact value?

Re: ALIENS. (Score:2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward 0.010000000c

Re: (Score:2) by Warma ( 1220342 ) Can you elaborate what makes you think, that the detected gravity waves propagate at 0.01c?

Re: (Score:3) by Lumpy ( 12016 ) How do you know they are not just reflections off the edge of the glass jar the universe is in?

Re: (Score:2) by michelcolman ( 1208008 ) but the real ones detected by LIGO seem to propagate at something more on the order of 0.01 c. Does someone have a more exact value? Sure, as far as we know, the exact value is c. Where did you find 0.01c? The distance between Livingston and Hanford is 3002 km, and the signals were received 1.1 milliseconds apart. In a straight line that would be rougly 3 million km/sec, or 10c. But obviously the signal came in at an angle. If it had come in perpendicular to the line between the two detectors, they would have detected it simultaneously. So it must have come from somewhere in between, I would say around 6 degrees off the perpendicular plan

Re: (Score:1) by micahraleigh ( 2600457 ) Should be c.

Re: (Score:2) by Maritz ( 1829006 ) That there's millisecond delays at all at the scale we're talking has me unconvinced that we've detected a gravity wave. Hyperskeptical I see. I presume you've read up on all the measures that they take to find the real signal and subtract noise? They weren't sufficient for you?

Re: (Score:2) by number6x ( 626555 ) If the gravity waves were travelling faster than the speed of light, we would not have detected them. We wouldn't be here to detect them because gravity waves propagating through spacetime faster than the speed of light would mean that the universe doesn't work and that would be the end of everything. I suggest Misner, Thorne and Wheeler [amazon.com], an appropriately weighty tome, for more information on the nature of space time. whenever I have trouble sleeping, this book, saved from my graduate school days always do

Re: (Score:2) by bondsbw ( 888959 ) gravity waves propagating through spacetime faster than the speed of light would mean that the universe doesn't work the way we thought FTFY. Science.

Re: (Score:2) by rgbatduke ( 1231380 ) I think you slipped a decimal. The LIGO observatories are roughly 3000 km apart, so a straight line lag between them is around 10 milliseconds. A lag of 1 millisecond meansi that the (essentially plane) wave came in at a small angle relative to the perpendicular plane separating them. The triangle involved would (conveniently enough) have a short leg around 300 km long, and that's still a small angle so without a calculator roughly 0.1 radians on one or the other side of the perpendicular plane. I'm not

Re: (Score:2) by LifesABeach ( 234436 ) Maybe you could just ask them how they did it?

Re: (Score:2) by rgbatduke ( 1231380 ) If I had any ligoites in my addressbook, sure, but lacking that, posting on /. is a good way to proceed. OTOH, reading the wikipedia page would probably do it too. At the moment I'm making up a physics final and don't have time -- I was just dangling bait to see if I could get a lazy answer in the meantime...;- )

Re: (Score:2) by TheSync ( 5291 ) I'm not certain how they manage to set the azimuthal angle See: Rapid Bayesian position reconstruction for gravitational-wave transients [aps.org] "We introduce BAYESTAR, a rapid, Bayesian, non-Markov chain Monte Carlo sky localization algorithm that takes just seconds to produce probability sky maps that are comparable in accuracy to the full analysis. Prompt localizations from BAYESTAR will make it possible to search electromagnetic counterparts of compact binary mergers."

Re: (Score:2) by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * How does a hydroelectric dam grab you?

Re: (Score:2) by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) Doesn't all technology that we know of depend on gravity in some form or another? Technology does not exist in nature, it is created. For people to exist to create the technology, they need a planet capable of sustaining life. To have a planet with an atmosphere or even to have a planet at all, requires gravity. Ergo, all technology depends on gravity.

› Why? (Score:2) by phantomfive ( 622387 ) Why did it take so long to detect these? I know that there have been plenty of experiments attempting to measure them before. Are the waves smaller than expect, thus harder to detect? What was the thing preventing discovery? 2 hidden comments Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative) by Edis Krad ( 1003934 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @12:03AM (#52326877) Are the waves smaller than expect, thus harder to detect? Indeed. They're very small. We're talking about a shift in space the size of a very small fraction of a proton [space.com]. So yes, with the current detectors they're pretty hard to detect. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate

Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative) by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @12:33AM (#52326955) Journal The current detectors are the most sensitive instruments ever developed by humanity, and in and of themselves mark a major leap forward in technical ability. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate 3 hidden comments

Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful) by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @01:45AM (#52327177) Journal You have no idea what it will or will not address. When the first scientists were mucking around with electricity in the 18th century they were giving people shocks and making frogs legs jump. Within a hundred years they were rolling out the world's first global high speed communication's system. So take your contrarianism and stick it up your ass. Your type would have us still beating each other with sticks, because, you know, what good does that shiny shit in the ground do us? Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate

Re: (Score:2) by peragrin ( 659227 ) When scientists first started mucky around with electricity it had an affect that could be understood and felt. same goes for lasers, and everything else you use. To detect TWO gravity waves we had to wait for TWO massive blackholes to combine. And space itself moved by a proton fraction. Do you have any idea how tiny of fraction that is to be useful? Right about now earth is about the best space ship we can hope for. As it is the only way to get one gravity.

Re: (Score:2) by tomxor ( 2379126 ) When scientists first started mucky around with electricity it had an affect that could be understood and felt. same goes for lasers, and everything else you use. To detect TWO gravity waves we had to wait for TWO massive blackholes to combine. And space itself moved by a proton fraction. Do you have any idea how tiny of fraction that is to be useful? Right about now earth is about the best space ship we can hope for. As it is the only way to get one gravity. Your argument is selective at best, some of the most profound invention in history fell out of some obscure research that no one including the people researching them had ever imagined would be of practical use. Turing accidentally invented computer by investigating the nature of information, a fundamental property of the universe. Put yourself in the position of those people, you are focusing on applications that you already know about - you can't think about the ones you don't know about unless you open yo

Re: (Score:2) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) Do you have any idea how tiny of fraction that is to be useful? Right about now earth is about the best space ship we can hope for. As it is the only way to get one gravity. Earth is not a space ship. It has no propulsion. At most it's a space probe, and even then, it's not just Earth. You'd need the whole solar system. Since it's not going anywhere (the idea that we're not part of the milky way has been debunked) it's not that, either. Unless, maybe, the whole galaxy is a space ship. I suppose that's an idea which merits further investigation.

Re: (Score:2) by Lumpy ( 12016 ) And the only reason we achieved so much in such a little amount of time is because the INFORMATION WAS SHARED FREELY. each scientist was able to use the work of the previous. Now the stupidity of copyright and patents are slowing down progress at an alarming rate.

Re: (Score:2) by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) Back then, information was not shared freely. Scientists hid their findings until they could publish or present, often years later. That is why there they fought over who discovered what, since 5 people might discover it between the first person and when he got around to publishing the result. Hard to prove you did it first.

Re: (Score:2) by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 ) INFORMATION WAS SHARED FREELY. each scientist was able to use the work of the previous. That was most certainly not the case. Or Newton and Leibnitz had not accused each other for stealing their ideas about differential equations and integrals.

Re: (Score:2) by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) And the only reason we achieved so much in such a little amount of time is because the INFORMATION WAS SHARED FREELY. each scientist was able to use the work of the previous. Now the stupidity of copyright and patents are slowing down progress at an alarming rate. And who is stopping the free sharing of information? It's not the government. It's not the public. It's the universities. Why? so they can capitalize on the monetization of their findings. This was less of a problem before there was large scale public funding (government grants). One way to fix it is by having any royalties go back to the public coffers in proportion to the public spending on the research. If 10% of the funding is from the government, then 10% of the resulting royalties go back to the gove

Re: (Score:2) by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) You have no idea what it will or will not address. When the first scientists were mucking around with electricity in the 18th century they were giving people shocks and making frogs legs jump. Within a hundred years they were rolling out the world's first global high speed communication's system. So take your contrarianism and stick it up your ass. Your type would have us still beating each other with sticks, because, you know, what good does that shiny shit in the ground do us? The usefulness of gravitational waves to society will probably not be on the equivalent of electricity. Electricity always existed. However, prior to being able to generate it for ourselves, it was random in occurrence (lightning), much like gravitational waves. So, unless you think we are on the verge of being able to generate our own gravitational waves, it is unlikely that the confirmation of Einstein's theory of their existence will have a practical application any time soon and almost certainly, not

Re: (Score:3) by Bengie ( 1121981 ) Money invested into a specific scientific discipline has greatly diminishing returns. Couple that with no one knowing which scientific discipline or combinations of will cause the next breakthrough, and spreading our money around is the best investment. Many domains already have huge amounts of private funding, little point in the government throwing money at better optics for microscopes.

Re: (Score:2) by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) Scientists that where mucking around with electricity in the 18th century was not government funded... If society, today, practiced the same amount of philanthropy and charitable given as in the 18th (and 19th) century, the government wouldn't need to fund research today.

Re: (Score:2) by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) Fuck you -- how dare you try to dictate the good of humanity You are a vile and clueless piece of shit that would hold humanity back in your asshole attempt to tell us how to think and live our lives Let me guess -- you're a progressive liberal. Probably want to tell me what to eat as well Isn't your condemnation of whomever you were responding to, just another example of of somebody trying to tell others how to think and live their lives?

Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful) by Megol ( 3135005 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @02:49AM (#52327299) Strangely enough humanity as a whole can multitask. Individuals can too. For your complaint to be valid humanity could only do one thing at a time, that specialization doesn't help when developing something (humans are replaceable cogs) and that somehow your idea what is important is the key to future advancements. You also disregard the fact that basic research often helps progress in unexpected ways - including the area of microscopy. However you seem to think that just throwing monkeys (read: humans) on typewriters (research) is the best way to develop solutions. That in itself should be a huge warning sign that you shouldn't be taken serious. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate

Re: (Score:2) by Maritz ( 1829006 ) That's not the kind of "technical ability" nor the kind of instrument we need. You think you know what we need. You're wrong. You don't.

Re: (Score:2) by ctrl-alt-canc ( 977108 ) Actually, given the level of some comments here, better microscopes are really needed just to detect the presence of a brain in some people.

Re: (Score:2) by kimvette ( 919543 ) > Doesn't matter. That's not the kind of "technical ability" nor the kind of instrument we need. It won't help us to address a single pressing or practical problem here on Earth in the foreseeable future. It most certainly does matter. If the alcubierre drive (aka "warp drive") is to ever become reality, we need to more fully understand how gravity works, and then we need to develop a way to create and manipulate gravity waves and development of the sort of power sources required will likely take centurie

Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting) by quenda ( 644621 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @01:31AM (#52327149) But gravity waves are like elephants in your fridge compared to the problem of detecting gravity particles. a detector with the mass of Jupiter and 100% efficiency, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, would only be expected to observe one graviton every 10 years, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate 1 hidden comment

Re: (Score:1) by michelcolman ( 1208008 ) But I'm detecting gravitons all the time! I wouldn't be sitting in this seat if it wasn't for gravitons. I think someone misunderstood something here. Possibly me ;-)

Re: (Score:2) by CRCulver ( 715279 ) I would like to know this as well. When I was a teenager and first read Larry Niven's story "The Borderlands of Sol" (namely when it was republished in the collection Crashlander [amazon.com]), where a gravity detector plays a role in the story, I assumed this was a real technology. After all, ways to detect electromagnetic waves or particle radiation had long been around. I thought nothing of it for a couple of decades, and then was surprised to read the news a while back of the "first ever detection of gravitational w

Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative) by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @12:09AM (#52326901) Homepage It took so long because the signal is mind-bogglingly weak. No detector was sensitive enough or well designed enough to rule out false positives. The LIGO experiment is much more sensitive and a lot of effort put in to detect false positives (including some social engineering). The detectors also underwent a very extensive testing phase before they were considered ready. We also weren't sure how frequent these events were, but now we are expecting a few more events.

But, it must be said indirect evidence of gravitational waves already were detected through the observation of two pulsars orbiting and closing in on each other at a rate predicted by the theory. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate

Re: (Score:2) by phantomfive ( 622387 ) The LIGO experiment is much more sensitive and a lot of effort put in to detect false positives (including some social engineering). How can social engineering be useful at all in this case?

Re: (Score:3) by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) If I had to hazard a guess, with incredibly fine instruments, there's a risk of experimenter effect [wikipedia.org].

Re: Why? (Score:2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward They had a system to inject test data into the final stage analysis. The people doing it did it blind to publication ready point. Partly it was to ensure nobody leaked before the 'envelope was opened'. 1 hidden comment

Re: (Score:2) by michelcolman ( 1208008 ) So the graviton was both there and not there as long as you didn't open the envelope?

Re: (Score:2) by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) We also weren't sure how frequent these events were, but now we are expecting a few more events. I'm no statistician, but assuming that the intervals between detectable events are exponentially distributed (seems reasonable to me), the fact that we detected the first event pretty quickly within a certain time period would seem to suggest that too high or too low values of lambda (not fitting the first successful observation) are unlikely.

Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative) by bjorniac ( 836863 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @12:23AM (#52326923) Noise. All kinds of noise. The system is an interferometer - basically two lasers set up in a large L shape with mirrors (massive simplification). When the lengths of the arms are the same, the beams cancel, when they differ a signal is recorded. Now, the differences in length due to a gravitational wave is tiny, and the problem that kept LIGO from their detection is that there are huge numbers of sources of vibrations around the same frequencies as expected from gravitational waves that have far larger amplitudes. Thermal vibrations, for example, are a killer for experiments like this. The waves themselves have almost exactly the waveforms that were predicted - the template fits from simulations match amazingly well in terms of amplitudes, frequencies and their evolution. What stopped experiments like this from making the observation was simply a lack of technical skill to make a precise enough instrument. Following the development of LIGO over the last decade, this is precisely what everyone working on the project said - once the noise curve is reduced to form Advanced LIOG (recent upgrade) the noise would be sufficiently small than an integrated signal against a template would be clearly visible, and now it is. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate

Re: Why? (Score:2) by master_p ( 608214 ) And why isn't it detecting waves on a daily basis? The universe is supposed to contain billions of black holes.

Re: (Score:3) by bruce_the_loon ( 856617 ) LIGO is detecting the gravitational storm that happens when two black holes, each 10-30 times the mass of the sun, actually collide and merge. Standalone black holes shouldn't generate gravity waves unless disturbed by something massive close by. Orbital binary systems should generate gravity waves, but those would be a couple of orders of magnitude less powerful than two colliding black holes and LIGO isn't sensitive enough to detect those out of the noise.

Re: (Score:2) by SharpFang ( 651121 ) Wouldn't it be able to detect weaker events if they happen closer to us?

Re: (Score:3) by Bengie ( 1121981 ) Yes, but it's how much weaker. For a brief moment, those two blackholes released more energy that the rest of the entire observable Universe, that includes all of those quasars. Even gamma ray bursts only outshine their local galaxy.

Re: (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward What bruce said, and also remember that the strength of waves decays according to the square of our distance from them. This means that a black hole collision has to be "relatively" close to us to be detectable. The first collision was a bit over 1 billion light years away and was just detectable. The observable universe is a bit over 90 billion light years. This means that we miss a something like 99.9999% of similar events that happen in the universe simply because our detectors aren't sensitive enoug

Re: (Score:2) by Lord Crc ( 151920 ) And why isn't it detecting waves on a daily basis? The universe is supposed to contain billions of black holes. The black hole merger that was first detected had a peak power output that was 50 times greater than the total power output of all the stars in the observable universe. The waves from that merger caused the arms of the LIGO detectors to differ in length by 0.000000000000000000001 meters, which is roughly like the earth getting wider by 10 protons. This latest merger involved less massive black holes which should mean it had a lot less peak power.

Re: (Score:2) by toonces33 ( 841696 ) For a while I was starting to wonder if we would need space-based interferometers to solve the noise/vibration problem. But fortunately that wasn't needed.

radiated into space as gravitational waves?! (Score:1) by sittingnut ( 88521 ) "radiated into space as gravitational waves" that statement was written by somebody who does not understand what he/she is talking about when using words like 'space' in this context, and probably watched some eye candy animation that used same kind of false imagery to explain this. 3 hidden comments Re: (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward How should the statement be written? 1 hidden comment

Re: (Score:2) by ultranova ( 717540 ) How should the statement be written? "Massive ego, detecting an accomplishment that did not originate from itself, quickly moved into action to diminish it, causing the fabric of noosphere to ripple in a disgusted reaction."

Re: (Score:2) by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) No, instead we get that awful animated infographic (complete with obligatory nondescript upbeat music). To be honest I prefer a nice dry and poorly designed Powerpoint over that.

Re: (Score:2) by dave420 ( 699308 ) No, instead of reading a scientific report on these findings you went to the mass media and complained it was the mass media. The problem lies with you not knowing where to find what you're looking for, not that what you're looking for doesn't exist.

Small black holes, right? (Score:2) by GoodNewsJimDotCom ( 2244874 ) Is it just me or black holes just slightly bigger than the sun sound small?

Re: (Score:2) by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) Provided that if the Sun were to become a black hole, its diameter would only be 6 km ... (ie 200,000 times less), the thing that gives a current-Sun size black hole is gigantic! (one [space.com] two [windows2universe.org]). 3 hidden comments

Re: (Score:2) by Maritz ( 1829006 ) It's easy if you just think of it in terms of kilopounds per megainch.

Re: (Score:2) by SharpFang ( 651121 ) To be precise, it's size would be zero. It's a singularity, no actual size. The diameter given when describing size of a black hole is the diameter of event horizon created by the black hole. It's still just "empty space", but that's a point-of-no-return, and whatever's inside, will not escape (minus Hawking Radiation, but that's nitpicking) and that's an important characteristic that describes a limit beyond which everything is "as good as inside the black hole", the 3km from the center not doing a squat of

Re: (Score:2) by Rob Riggs ( 6418 ) Unless you have a testable theory to show that its size is is anything less than the event horizon, you just have faith that its size is 0 and nothing more.

Re: (Score:2) by burtosis ( 1124179 ) Is it just me or black holes just slightly bigger than the sun sound small? I think it's a reference to the overall idea there are two size ranges of black holes. Small (stellar) and super massive. For technical reasons there seem to be a lack of many holes in the 100 to 100k solar mass size range. Supermassive mergers are thought to happen sometime after galaxies merge, but this is far less common than thier smaller counterpart mergers. Intermediate holes seem to be quite rare. [wikipedia.org]

Re: (Score:2) by Maritz ( 1829006 ) It could be that intermediates are just very hard to spot with conventional astronomy. Judging by the results of LIGO so far, we might be starting to "see" a more expected amount.

Don't forget Australia (Score:2) by EEPROMS ( 889169 ) there are two detectors not one, one is based in Australia the other in the USA. Also many of the parts used in both sensor arrays were designed and created in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIGO 1 hidden comment Re: (Score:2) by dargaud ( 518470 ) And what about VIRGO in Italy which is also part of the collaboration ? It was offline during the 1st detection; did it catch it this time ?

Re: (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward No, Virgo was offline during the entire observation run. The collaboration decided that it would be better to perform upgrades at LIGO and Virgo at different times, so Virgo observed for another year when LIGO went offline and Virgo continues finishing upgrades for a year after LIGO resumed operations. That way, the period without any observation run was reduced and duplicate efforts could be reduced. LIGO and Virgo will start a joint observation run at the end of this year. Re: (Score:3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward There are three main detectors; two in the USA (LIGO) and one in Italy (Virgo). Currently, a detector is under construction in Japan and a fifth one using LIGO components will be built in India. Additionally, there is a smaller detector in Germany that is only sensitive in higher frequencies. It is mainly used to test technology, but it is also used for certain types of sources. Having multiple detectors is very useful, because coincidence is used to determine the sky position. A single detector can only det

Getting close to design sensitivity (Score:2) by Laxator2 ( 973549 ) Every time they get closer to the design sensitivity the detector can spot signals coming from farther away, as the wave amplitude follows the inverse square law. This increase in range will result in a great increase in the _volume_ they can observe, and remember that these detectors do not need to be pointed they way telescopes do. The project can clearly follow the Type 1a supernova project (which brought the Nobel Prize to Saul Perlmutter) and go from detecting one signal every few months to detecting a f

Good that it was ancient (Score:2) by drolli ( 522659 ) I guess I wouldn't want to observe something like that if i was only a light year away.

Collision? (Score:2) by DarthVain ( 724186 ) "Collision" might be a bit of a stretch. It implies immediacy. I didn't RTFA and I am no physicist, however I expect that the "Collision" took an extraordinary amount of time (galactic even as opposed to geologic time periods). Millions of years maybe? I have no idea. Seems if that is the case the summary is a bit sensational, in that it could more accurately be described as the waves of two black holes that slowly eventually merged into one... The end may have happened a lot quicker I suppose, but the lead

So far away (Score:2) by TheSync ( 5291 ) Both supposed gravitational wave detections were >400 megaparsecs (1.3 billion light years) distant. That is really, really far. For example, the CfA2 Great Wall [wikipedia.org] of galaxies is only 300 million light years from Earth. Are there really no black hole collisions happening closer to us? Are these really so rare?

Re:Why LIGO is a scam (Score:4, Funny) by Maritz ( 1829006 ) on Thursday June 16, 2016 @05:51AM (#52327665) I just don't know who to believe. Albert Einstein and several generations of cosmologists, or a AC blowhard on Slashdot. TORN. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate

Re: (Score:2) by Deadstick ( 535032 ) Quit bogarting, dammit.

Re: (Score:1) by micahraleigh ( 2600457 ) Gravity is continuous, not instantaneous.It takes about 8 mins for the gravity from the sun to arrive on earth.

You seem to have bought into the A theory of time which has some unlikely implications (like no temporal differences between objects moving at high speeds and stationary objects, but this has been measured and is consistently applied in applications such as GPS).

Re: (Score:1) by Maritz ( 1829006 ) Well if someone as obviously ignorant and stupid as you doesn't credit it, I'll give it the heave-ho. Thanks! Oh by the way, the saying is "mumbo-jumbo". We both know you'll keep mangling it, but it doesn't hurt to try to get something right for once in your god damn life, now does it?

Re: (Score:2) by Maritz ( 1829006 ) Sorry, what?

Re: (Score:2) by Bengie ( 1121981 ) And a blackhole takes an infinite amount of time to form. Why are you complaining about what blackholes can or cannot do if you don't believe they exist?

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