Posted on 06/15/2016 1:43:27 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: A new sky is becoming visible. When you look up, you see the sky as it appears in light -- electromagnetic radiation. But just over the past year, humanity has begun to see our once-familiar sky as it appears in a different type of radiation -- gravitational radiation. Today, the LIGO collaboration is reporting the detection of GW151226, the second confirmed flash of gravitational radiation after GW150914, the historic first detection registered three months earlier. As its name implies, GW151226 was recorded in late December of 2015. It was detected simultaneously by both LIGO facilities in Washington and Louisiana, USA. In the featured video, an animated plot demonstrates how the frequency of GW151226 changed with time during measurement by the Hanford, Washington detector. This GW-emitting system is best fit by two merging black holes with initial masses of about 14 and 8 solar masses at a redshift of roughly 0.09, meaning, if correct, that it took roughly 1.4 billion years for this radiation to reach us. Note that the brightness and frequency -- here mapped into sound -- of the gravitational radiation peaks during the last second of the black hole merger. As LIGO continues to operate, as its sensitivity continues to increase, and as other gravitational radiation detectors come online in the next few years, humanity's new view of the sky will surely change humanity's understanding of the universe.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Illustration Credit: LIGO, NSF]
These are great! Thank you.
I suspect this topic zips right over the heads of the majority of people on Free Republic.
Yup...black magic to all but a few.
Your comment reminded me of something a college professor said to me: “Electricity is magic”.
I used to work in the engineering department of a nuclear generating facility. It ain’t magic to me, though it is still wonderful.
1. every time we develop a way to “see” an additional part of the “stuff” (waves, etc.) that impinge on earth, we get more information about “what’s out there”
microwaves....help us see the earliest times (right after the “Big Bang” or creation)
radio waves...help us map out our (and other) galaxies
infrared... help us detect cool and darker stars, also exoplanets and to measure temperatures of objects out there
visible light... what you see every night
ultraviolet... help us see the youngest newest stars and the areas of the sky where stars are ‘born’...so-called star nurseries
x-rays... help us detect neutron stars and the material swirling around black holes, plus very very hot clouds etc
gamma rays ... help us detect supernova explosions and cosmic radioactive decay (and even the destuction of antimatter)
and now gravity waves ...? well, they are created by the rapid movements of very large, heavy masses, objects... so they have wavelengths even longer than the size of those objects..... almost certainly we will see more and more collisions or mergers of black holes.... also maybe we will be able to detect cosmic strings, or at least their collisions in space (super-thin strands left over from creation, the mapping and study of which should therefore help us learn more about creation itself we hope) and also gravity waves probably will pierce the “cloud” of cosmic background radition (supposed to have formed in Year of Creation 380,000)... enabling us some insight into Plank time (right back up the first second of creation)...
we hope.
meanwhile, maybe gravity waves will enable us to do something practical here on earth, too, like maybe detecting Hillary’s buried stash of $2? billion of foreign enemy bribe money and ?
Whether it leads to anything practical or not, I love the math associated with it! Even the math behind string theory has “practical” applications like in material science.
hi! i can clain no expertise in the mathematics of string theory, but often new discoveries (even if out in space) do lead to practical new things or learning back down here on Rock Three, yes.
also, since string or M-theory postulates 11 dimensions (in what I think is the most widely-accepted formulation, anyway), perhaps we will learn a way to send Obama and Hillary and Kerry into at least dimension 10
smile smile smile
Yes, and we are piling up logs around astakes at which to burn you practitioners of the dark astrophysical arts.
;’) Chances are... and that’s probably the case for the entire world as well.
Thank you.
It’s necessary.
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