Wot! No LIGO detects gravitational waves thread?

I'll defer that one to my physics degree studying wife. She'll know what you're on about :)

I don't have a clue

Or we have not yet worked out how to measure them, maybe even Einstein was incorrect . But either way not sure if there were any what the benifit would be ?

Ps but just read later news saying they have been discovered a bit confused

OK, that's interesting.  But alterations in the distance from lens to sensor of 10**-23 don't account for many of the flaws in my pictures, I suspect.

It is really interesting.  But perhaps not quite immediate.

Znapps said

Or we have not yet worked out how to measure them, maybe even Einstein was incorrect . But either way not sure if there were any what the benifit would be ?

Well that's what the announcement is about.

They have been detected and therefore measured. By two separate instruments.

Peer reviewed paper has been published. Nobel prize will follow.

If everyone took the view of having a benefit in order to do research, then this species is fucked. There are dozens of examples of research with no obvious benefit later becoming very important.

:)

Is it the reason why my pics are so naff?

doodyone said

Znapps said

Or we have not yet worked out how to measure them, maybe even Einstein was incorrect . But either way not sure if there were any what the benifit would be ?

Well that's what the announcement is about.

They have been detected and therefore measured. By two separate instruments.

Peer reviewed paper has been published. Nobel prize will follow.

If everyone took the view of having a benefit in order to do research, then this species is fucked. There are dozens of examples of research with no obvious benefit later becoming very important.

:)

+1

Midgley said

OK, that's interesting.  But alterations in the distance from lens to sensor of 10**-23 don't account for many of the flaws in my pictures, I suspect.

It is really interesting.  But perhaps not quite immediate.

You yourself (unaided) work with differences in wavelength of less than 100 nanometers (10^-9) ;)

Just over a century ago there was a experiment known as the Michelson Morley experiment. It famously failed but it was that very failure that became one of the main foundations of Albert Einstein's theories.

LIGO in very many ways used the exact same setup as Michelson and Morley (albeit a tad more sophisticated)...

So their failure gave rise to Eisenstein's theories for some of which we are only now (almost 100 years later) finding the supporting evidence.

Ironic huh?

Guess the moral is - Mistakes can be bl**dy useful :)

Edited by ampy

ampy said

Just over a century ago there was a experiment known as the Michelson Morley experiment. It famously failed but it was that very failure that became one of the main foundations of Albert Einstein's theories.

LIGO in very many ways used the exact same setup as Michelson and Morley (albeit a tad more sophisticated)...

So their failure gave rise to Eisenstein's theories for some of which we are only now (almost 100 years later) finding the supporting evidence.

Ironic huh?

Guess the moral is - Mistakes can be bl**dy useful :)

Edited by ampy

Abso bloody lutely :)

I wouldn't say the Michelson-Morley experiment failed.  It demonstrated that there was _not_ a stationary luminiferous aether thus falsifying a hypothesis.

Does that mean cheaper electricity?

Ken P said

Does that mean cheaper electricity?

No. That's unicorn horns.

doodyone said

If everyone took the view of having a benefit in order to do research, then this species is fucked. There are dozens of examples of research with no obvious benefit later becoming very important.

:)

And in maths, too. Just up the hill from me is a house with a blue plaque for a Reverend Thomas Bayes. A very bright man who wrote a book on religious philosophy, and also an anonymous proof of the rigour of Newton's work. And then he started fiddling around with a probability theory with relatively little application in his lifetime that is the basis of a huge amount of probability-based classification today (spam filters etc.), over 250 years after he died. 

Edited by mkhp

doodyone said

I don't believe it. One of the most important measurements made in the last 100 years, and no comment.

Go Einstein, yay!

:)

Agreed! I'm a massive reader of anything to do with general relativity, quantum electrodynamics etc. This is a very exciting time to be alive in. Historically science has observed, then explained. But we're living in an era of Physics that is predicting and then observing. That is very exciting indeed.

I friggin' love it!!