Posted on 06/19/2016 12:26:13 PM PDT by MtnClimber
How do you build a real-world machine to test the most abstract of theories? Janna Levin talks with Rai Weiss, one of the original designers of LIGO, the four-kilometer-long instrument that has now twice detected the distant reverberations of two black holes crashing into one another.
Janna Levin is a theoretical physicist she works with pen and paper to turn the elegant rules of the universe into theory. Rainer Weiss, or Rai, as hes known, is an experimental physicist he thinks about how to find and measure something that may or may not exist outside of theory. Weiss was part of the group that designed and built LIGO, the detector that, in September 2015, for the first time heard the sound of two black holes crashing into one another, producing a gravitational wave that stretched spacetime and proving something that Einstein first floated as a theory almost 100 years ago. Earlier this week, the LIGO team announced that on December 26, 2015, they had detected another rippling, spacetime-stretching gravitational wave that erupted 1.4 billion years ago when two other black holes collided at half the speed of light.
In a sparkling conversation held at a Brooklyn art space, Pioneer Works, Levin and Weiss (with help from journalist John Hockenberry) talked about how they work, how LIGO works and the moment when they realized Einstein had just been proven right. An edited version of the discussion follows.
The 50-year, billion-dollar bet
Janna Levin: The first detection made with LIGO was of a pair of black holes that collided 1.3 billion years ago. The success of the experiment was not only the detection of gravitational waves. That was the first time we detected a pair of black holes, because theyre dark and we cant see them with telescopes.
(Excerpt) Read more at ideas.ted.com ...
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A really interesting article about the LIGO project and the confirmation of Gravity Waves first predicted by Einstein as a part of General Relativity theory.
In the abstract all you need are two masses separated by a known distance and a really good measuring rod. The rest is just engineering.
Interesting insight, but I think on the wrong article...
I want to paddle out and catch one of those ripples on my surfboard and see how far I can go.
Ripples never come back. They’ve gone to the other side.
Nnyyehhhh. I’m highly skeptical.
1.3.billion year old collision detected?
hmmmmmm... was matt Kenseth racing back then..?
Let go my LIGO.
Ripple in still space-time
where there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow
Lol, you beat me to it...
You may not be far from the truth, someday
that may be the way to do it.
Good. You are still able to communicate. Which means you haven’t penetrated Hillary’s event horizon far enough to be sucked totally in to The Black Hole. Retreat while you can.
We need the old Laz back and not some sick, warped, twisted simulacrum of yourself that couldn’t hit anything. Even it’s own butt with either hand.
Roger Fox Dog Out.
The first detection made with LIGO was of a pair of black holes that collided 1.3 billion years ago.
Anything more recent?...........
They missed the one that happened in my back yard a few days ago.
My God, it's full of stars.
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