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New Gravitational Wave detections

Stu

By Stu
in The Astro Lounge

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bomberbaz

bomberbaz

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good find stu, I am getting a little obsessed with reading about neutron stars, black holes and quasars at the minute. I find the subject fascinating for many reasons but probably most of all because of the energy involved. As far beyond our minds comprehension as distance is when not explained as a light year.

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Stu

Stu

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5 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

good find stu, I am getting a little obsessed with reading about neutron stars, black holes and quasars at the minute. I find the subject fascinating for many reasons but probably most of all because of the energy involved. As far beyond our minds comprehension as distance is when not explained as a light year.

Agreed, it's a fascinating area. I thought the discovery of Gravitational Waves was one of the most remarkable events in my lifetime. The sheer difficulty and complexity of detecting these things, plus of course the fact they were there as predicted was quite amazing.

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bomberbaz

bomberbaz

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11 minutes ago, Stu said:

Agreed, it's a fascinating area. I thought the discovery of Gravitational Waves was one of the most remarkable events in my lifetime. The sheer difficulty and complexity of detecting the these things, plus of course the fact they were there as predicted was quite amazing.

Just goes to show you the genius of einstien, a man who was years ahead of most of his peers. I would have loved to have sat at a dinner table with him and chatted about physics. Dumbed down of course. ?

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niallk

niallk

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I hope so... I've been reading a New Scientist artcle about the analysis raising doubt that any gravitational waves have ever been detected by LIGO/other detectors ... a little bit depressing.  I had at first dismissed the headlines as sensationalism especially as there was the simultaneous flash of light detection for one event.  I really hope their method for signal detection in noise does hold up to full scrutiny, because it is amazing to be alive when these fundamental breakthrough discoveries in Physics are made.

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bomberbaz

bomberbaz

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21 minutes ago, niallk said:

I hope so... I've been reading a New Scientist artcle about the analysis raising doubt that any gravitational waves have ever been detected by LIGO/other detectors ... a little bit depressing.  I had at first dismissed the headlines as sensationalism especially as there was the simultaneous flash of light detection for one event.  I really hope their method for signal detection in noise does hold up to full scrutiny, because it is amazing to be alive when these fundamental breakthrough discoveries in Physics are made.

can't read the article, I need to subscribe to see . That said I think I will go with the LIGO scientists version of findings wjatver the NS say/think.

Some of the greatest minds in the world are involved in that project, have use of technology that makes the average pc look like a wristwatch and appear to be corroborating what Einstien predicted generations before and much of which has been proved.

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Stu

Stu

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7 minutes ago, jjosefsen said:

Didn't they also back up one or more of their observations with observations in the EM spectrum?

Yes I believe so. To much of a coincidence to be a false reading pulled out of the noise.

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Stu

Stu

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20 minutes ago, niallk said:

I know - all those points are what I thought too - and I sincerely hope that counter claims are incorrect.  I don't wish to derail the thread, sorry.

No need for apology Niall, it's all part of the discussion so perfectly valid to raise. After all, none of us really have the knowledge or insight to know if it is true or not, we have to trust the scientists.

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Stu

Stu

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4 hours ago, PaulM said:

This is great science and a remarkable achievement down to even knowing what caused the gravitational waves and the mass of the objects involved

Yes, that's one of the most amazing things, how much information they can get from that seemingly insignificant wave form.

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humblepigeon

humblepigeon

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Could lunar waves turn out to be visible evidence of gravitation waves?
youtube vid

Ive seen similar myself though just put it down to atmospheric distortions from aircraft, but looking again at these such videos show a clean line and travel at consistent speed, i don't see how it could be in the atmosphere.
Anyone here seen anything like this with their own eyes while observing? would love to know.

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PaulM

PaulM

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28 minutes ago, humblepigeon said:

Could lunar waves turn out to be visible evidence of gravitation waves?
youtube vid

Ive seen similar myself though just put it down to atmospheric distortions from aircraft, but looking again at these such videos show a clean line and travel at consistent speed, i don't see how it could be in the atmosphere.
Anyone here seen anything like this with their own eyes while observing? would love to know.

No as gravitational waves are not visually observable as they propagate through spacetime and travel at the speed of light

Glancing through the comments on that video was quite eye opening, is it a thing that people believe the moon to be a hologram ?

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barkis

barkis

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Another feather in Einstein's cap, GW's he predicted,  would/could emanate from interactions of giant bodies.  Black Hole collisions could propel the waves at lightspeed. 

Of course this phenomena is no longer a prediction, but a scientific fact.   

What can result from the study of these time travelling gravity disturbences   They may well hold answers to questions we know what to ask yet.

Forgive me if this post should be more at home  in a science fiction forum ?

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domstar

domstar

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It's quite interesting for me because I was helping to classify all the glitches on the gravitational wave detectors on something like gravity zoo. I must've done just short of a thousand and at the lower levels it was a nice unchallenging alternative to meaningless web-surfing for me. As it got harder I lost interest and didn't like the (extremely low) responsibility and I never got to see a 'chirp', which would indicate a gravitational wave. (Just to be clear-I'm not suggesting I think I could've discovered a gravitational wave but it is possible to see the readings of one)

Anyway, if there's space in your life for a bit of low intensity computer based r n r, give it a try. I might try and remember my password- It's sometimes slightly more rewarding than watching the football or browsing on ebay.?

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  • 3 weeks later...
Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

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I read a more detailed report on the paper behind the New Scientist article.

The basic premise was that there was enormous broad-band noise that swamped the tiny signatures of the events.

That, in itself was meaningless criticism. I could create similar graphs of 'overwhelming broadband noise' and a nice clean but tiny signal extracted from it. That's exactly what an SDR does by fourier analysis to strip out all the unwanted frequencies. You can see a massive mess of apparently random noise and yet get an narrowband signal out.

If my laptop and a £16 gewgaw off eBay can do that,  then I am unsurprised that it's possible to detect a tiny gravitational signals with rather more sophisticated equipment using essentially the same techniques.

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niallk

niallk

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As far as I loosely understand, it is more than excess noise bandwidth limiting or narrowband filtering of broadband noise to improve signal to noise ratio.  The detection technique involves cross correlation with wave signatures which are pre computed from theoretical gravitational interaction scenarios.  An analogy could be coding gain in CDMA used in cell phones.

I tried reading the paper from the group who raised their concerns: it seemed to me that there was a specific GW candidate that they were questioning - as opposed to all claimed detections... as some of the sensationalist headlines were suggesting!!

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Stu

Stu

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1 hour ago, jjosefsen said:

Looks like we can put this to bed now. ?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/studies-rescue-ligos-gravitational-wave-signal-from-the-noise-20181213/

I for one am glad the results were questioned, investigated and confirmed. Now we know to a more certain degree that GWs were detected.

Thanks for that link, very interesting. I love the graphic at the end,showing the 10 events discovered so far.

F4DA2CB9-2591-4E9B-AD5F-B1A0B87A5ADE.gif

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niallk

niallk

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10 hours ago, jjosefsen said:

Looks like we can put this to bed now. ?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/studies-rescue-ligos-gravitational-wave-signal-from-the-noise-20181213/

I for one am glad the results were questioned, investigated and confirmed. Now we know to a more certain degree that GWs were detected.

That's a great article you linked :thumbsup:

It is great that the findings have been independently corroborated.  It's truly amazing.

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