Physics Is Weird and We Are Weirder!

[saac]

Just reading Brian Cox's and Jeff Forshaw's new book "Black Holes ,The Key To Understanding The Universe" and right out of the blocks on the 1st chapter I find myself lost for words.  In chapter one there is a short account of LIGO's detection of gravitational waves back in 2015 and while the "mechanics" of the detection have been described before, this particular account took my breath away.  Cox and Forshaw describe it something like this.  Paraphrased  - around 1.3 billion years ago an event happened somewhere in the universe, two black holes collided and merged.  In less than 2 tenths of a second the merger outshone (power output) all the stars in the observable universe 50 times over!  We detected the "echo" of that collision 1.3 billion years later using an instrument, LIGO, which measured a change in the length of a 4km laser beam of less than 1000 th of the diameter of a proton!  Wow, that we could even dare to think we could do that!

Jim 

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by saac

[andrew s]

It's not weird it's wonderful (quite literally). Regards Andrew 

[Steve Ward]

Dr Becky Smethurst's new book on Black Holes is one I'd recommend reading too ... https://www.bookdepository.com/Brief-History-Black-Holes-Dr-Becky-Smethurst/9781529086706?ref=grid-view&qid=1665721106988&sr=1-2#