LIGO
milhayser | October 28, 2016On Pharyngula, PZ Myers examines the work of Yoshinori Ohsumi, who was awarded the prize in Physiology for his studies of autophagy in yeast. Autophagy, or self-consumption, is a strategy used by all cells to recycle malfunctioning bits of themselves, or to survive during times of starvation. But autophagy is also involved in cancer metastasis and may play a role in other diseases such as Parkinson's. Meanwhile, the Nobel prize in Physics did not go to LIGO and the observation of gravitational waves as widely expected. Instead it was divided between three individuals for "theoretical…
milhayser | March 15, 2016In a validation of Albert Einstein's genius, the power of new technology, and the relevance of the scientific method (even if it takes a century), scientists working on a project called LIGO have witnessed ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by gravitational waves. First predicted by Einstein in 1916 on the basis of general relativity, gravitational waves are cosmic shock waves that can result from the interactions of massive objects like black holes and neutron stars. Unlike electromagnetic waves, which pass through space, gravitational waves change the shape of space itself. Extremely…
catdynamics | February 11, 2016In 2011 Daniel Holz gave a Heinz R. Pagels Public Lecture at the Aspen Center for Physics on the topic of Gravitational Waves. The talk is one of the better explanations of what this is all about, with a bonus introduction!
catdynamics | February 11, 2016LIGO and allies have also provided a bunch of fun useful stuff:
Have We Detected Gravitational Waves Yet?
Stretch and Squash
Black Hole Hunter
Einstein@Home
Gravitational Waves 101 - Markus Pössel's excellent visualizations.
The Data
The Papers
SXS - Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes visualizations
The Chirp - courtesy of Georgia Tech GR group
catdynamics | February 11, 2016February 11th was a good day.
I spent the day at the "Dynamics and accretion at the Galactic Center" Conference at the Aspen Center for Physics, where about 75 physicists have spent the week talking about black holes and stuff.
This morning we watched the LIGO press conference, frantically deciphered the papers, and had a LIGO Science Collaboration member give us a very good rundown of what the situation is.
Over the last few months, LIGO has been making some very good outreach material to explain what is what:
LIGO: A Passion for Understanding a film by Kai Staats
LIGO: Generations
LIGO…
gregladen | February 11, 2016First, what is a gravitational wave?
I find it interesting that some people are expressing difficulty in understanding what a gravitational wave is, as though everybody (who is not a physicist) has a perfectly good understanding of what any kind of wave is. We don't need to go too deeply beneath the surface, as it were, to understand this well enough to be amazed at the discovery, but not well enough to get a job being a Gravitational Waveologist.
Imagine a perfectly flat pond. Imagine throwing a stone out into the middle of the pond. Now imagine ripples, tiny waves, spreading out from the…
esiegel | August 21, 2012"There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere." -Isaac Asimov
One of the most spectacular and successful ideas of the 20th Century was Einstein's General Relativity, or the idea that matter and energy determines the curvature of spacetime, and the curvature of spacetime in turn determines how gravitation works.
Image credit: Hyper-Mathematics - Uzayzaman / Spacetime.
From the orbits of planets to the bending of starlight, General Relativity governs all gravitational phenomena in the Universe, and accurately describes every observation we've…