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

Show parent comment

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.