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Contents
Concept
of Gravity
Aristotle
Newton
Einstein
Prediction
Discovery
Future
Gravitation
al waves
LIGO
Properties
of GW
EMs vs
GWs
Early
Universe
Cosmology
Unknowns
Round 1: Newton
Gravity really does exist, Newton
stated in 1687. It acts according to
the laws which we have explained,
and abundantly serves to account
for all the motions of the celestial
bodies.
Round 1: Newton
But How does it work??
Silence from Newtons corner.
The truth is, Newton could describe
gravity, but he didnt know how it worked.
Gravity must be caused by an agent
acting constantly according to certain
laws, he admitted. But whether this
agent be material or immaterial, I have
left to the consideration of my readers.
Round 2: Einstein
Apparently Albert Einstein
wasnt intimidated. He even
apologized. Newton, forgive
me, he wrote in his
memoirs. You found the
only way which, in your age,
was just about possible for a
man of highest thought and
creative power.
Einsteins Prediction
In 1915, after eight years of sorting
his thoughts, Einstein had dreamed
up (literally--he had no experimental
precursors) an agent that caused
gravity. And it wasnt simply a force.
According to his theory of General
Relativity, gravity is much weirder: a
natural consequence of a masss
influence on space.
Einsteins Prediction
Einstein agreed with Newton that space
had dimension: width, length, and
height. Space might be filled with
matter, or it might not. But Newton
didnt believe that space was affected
by the objects in it. Einstein did. He
theorized that a mass can prod space
plenty. It can warp it, bend it, push it, or
pull it. Gravity was just a natural
outcome of a masss existence in space.
1st Clue
It wasnt until 1974 that scientists even got
close. That year two radio astronomers,
Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse, were
analyzing
a
pair
of
neutron
stars
(superdense collapsed stars) that orbit each
other. Hulse and Taylor realized that the
orbits were speeding up at a rate Einstein
predicted would occur if gravitational waves
were indeed being generated by the system.
The first indirect evidence of gravitational
waves was in, but the waves themselves
were not directly measured.
Einsteins Prediction
1979 - National Science Foundation (NSF) funds California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena and MIT to develop design for LIGO
1990 - NSF agrees to fund $250 million LIGO experiment
1992 - Sites in Washington and Louisiana selected for LIGO facilities; construction starts 2
years later
1995 - Construction starts on GEO600 gravitational wave detector in Germany, which
partners with LIGO and starts taking data in 2002
1996 - Construction starts on VIRGO gravitational wave detector in Italy, which starts
taking data in 2007
20022010 - Runs of initial LIGOno detection of gravitational waves
2007 - LIGO and VIRGO teams agree to share data, forming a single global network of
gravitational wave detectors
20102015 - $205 million upgrade of LIGO detectors
2015 - Advanced LIGO begins initial detection runs in September
Gravitational Waves
LIGO
Various gravitational-wave observatories (detectors) are
under construction or in operation, such as
Advanced LIGO which began observations in September
2015. Potential sources of detectable gravitational waves
include binary star systems composed of white dwarfs,
neutron stars, or black holes. On February 11, 2016, the
LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration
teams announced that they had
first observation of gravitational waves from a pair of
merging black holes using the Advanced LIGO detectors.
Present Discovery
Discovery
The signal was seen by both LIGO detectors, in
Livingston and Hanford, with a time difference of 7
milliseconds due to the angle between the two
detectors and the source. The signal came from the
Southern Celestial Hemisphere, in the rough direction
of (but much further away than) the Magellanic
Clouds. The confidence level of the discovery was
99.99994%. The research made by the Rochester
Institute of Technology contributed to the discovery.