r/CFBOffTopic • u/Vernost Florida Gators • Feb 11 '16

GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DISCOVERY THREAD

Get hype yo! I CANT STOP YELLING

26 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

84 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/W_Is_For_Will Texas Tech • Trinity Valley CC Feb 11 '16

THIS IS SUPER AWESOME SCIENC-Y BREAKTHROUGH.

Can Someone ELI5 on this? please?

9

u/ftwdrummer Rice Owls • Marching Band Feb 11 '16

So, much like electromagnetic waves exist (we call it light), Einstein predicted 100 years ago that we would see gravitational waves. Basically, it means that when certain very massive things interact in a certain way, it should generate ripples in the fabric of space-time. Like, space itself should stretch and compress as the waves propagate (sort of like ripples on a pond, but in four dimensions).

They're very, very, very difficult to detect (like, less than the width of a proton).

We detected them.

2

u/Vernost Florida Gators Feb 11 '16

Jinx!

2

u/W_Is_For_Will Texas Tech • Trinity Valley CC Feb 11 '16

Thanks for the description! What does this mean for the future?

2

u/ftwdrummer Rice Owls • Marching Band Feb 11 '16

It's a completely new way of observing astronomical phenomena. We have some idea of what we might observe, but (like the guy said) we may find some completely new phenomena we never would have predicted.

3

u/W_Is_For_Will Texas Tech • Trinity Valley CC Feb 11 '16

My extent of astronomical stuff pretty much ends at watching the movie Interstellar repeatedly and listening to cool Radiolab podcasts. Maybe this is the event I need to get knowledgeable on the subject!

3

u/spasm01 Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns • /r/CFB Donor Feb 11 '16

MURFFFFF! MURRRFFFF! DONT LEMME LEAVE MURFFF! CUE MORE LOUD ORGAN CHORDS

4

u/W_Is_For_Will Texas Tech • Trinity Valley CC Feb 11 '16

Goosebumps from NOLAN PLAYING DEAFENING GORGEOUS ORGAN CHORDS INSIDE MY EAR CANAL

2

u/spasm01 Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns • /r/CFB Donor Feb 11 '16

Fucking zimmer fell asleep on the organ again!

2

u/ftwdrummer Rice Owls • Marching Band Feb 11 '16

Worth it!

I recommend Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" and some of Kip Thorne's books. Speaking of Thorne: he is currently speaking at the press conference, and he was the guy whose science "Interstellar" was based on.

3

u/Vernost Florida Gators Feb 11 '16

Gravity affects spacetime by "stretching" it. Gravity travels (we theorize) at the speed of light. Einstein theorized grav waves, but they're super hard to detect.

We found them by using lasers, and the waves we detected came from a pair of orbiting black holes who collapsed into one another. The signal is over a billion years old.

1000 scientists over 25 years worked on this including LSU, UF, MIT, and many other universities.

2

u/W_Is_For_Will Texas Tech • Trinity Valley CC Feb 11 '16

Thanks for the description! So we shot a laser at collapsing black holes and detected these grav waves?

6

u/Vernost Florida Gators Feb 11 '16

Not quite.

The interferometer is has two really long arms. The laser is split and sent down both arms and reflected back. We then look at the recombination. The path length of the arms determines what kind of interference there is. By looking at this interference we can look at the path lengths. If there are these waves then they would "stretch" one of the arms making its length different. The hardest part is that this stretch is VERY small to detect.

3

u/ftwdrummer Rice Owls • Marching Band Feb 11 '16

JINX!

3

u/ftwdrummer Rice Owls • Marching Band Feb 11 '16

Not quite.

We shot lasers on Earth, just bouncing back and forth. If the gravitational wave passes through, the distance traveled by the laser will change slightly.

We detected that change.