Spacecraft Launches to Test the Hunt for Ripples in the Fabric of Spacetime

universetoday.com ^ | on December 3, 2015 | Nancy Atkinson

[BenLurkin]

The European Space Agency successfully launched the LISA Pathfinder, a spacecraft designed to demonstrate technology for observing gravitational waves in space. The launch took place at Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on a Vega rocket, at 4:04 GMT on December 3, (10:04 pm EST Dec 2), 2015.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, which were predicted by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. So far, because they are extremely tiny and incredibly faint, gravitational waves have proved to be elusive. The technology needed to detect them is highly sensitive and therefore has been difficult to conceive, plan and build.

The LISA Pathfinder mission is only testing the technology to see if it will be possible to detect the waves caused by a gravitational event such as the collision of two black holes, a supernova or a star with a wobbly spin.

Such an event should cause a minute distortion in the fabric of space, and it is predicted that these tiny changes should be detectable. However, the accuracy needed to detect any gravitational waves is extraordinary. An example of how tiny gravitational waves are: the ripples emitted by a pair of orbiting black holes would stretch a million kilometer-long ruler by less than the size of an atom.

[uglybiker]

Look no further than Fred Sanford's house.

[PIF]

Onl;y a few of the Elder races use gravity propulsion ...

[PIF]

The glasses suck, like the entire offering with Peter Whatever.

[higgmeister]

I have been watching since the early Eighties and don’t imagine I will quit simply because Capaldi is a little different. The regeneration from Tom Baker to Peter Davison was pretty drastic but I continued to watch then too. I didn’t watch Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy because at the time those episodes weren’t shown here.