6 ms·

From the comments: "... how much noise exists in the measurement environment? I find it difficult to believe something even as mundane as a minuscule earthquake

by ccozan 11y ago

From the comments: "... how much noise exists in the measurement environment? I find it difficult to believe something even as mundane as a minuscule earthquake or similar ground noise wouldn’t cause orders of magnitude more of a signal and therefore swamp out any meaning information" This is also the first thing that came to my mind. How do the filter noise? Or are we missing something that is not described in the article? And secondly, why not putting ( teoretically) this lasers into space? Aside the solar radiation/wind, not much would interfere if put around the Lagrange points.

Steuard 11y ago
As I understand it, this is one of the main reasons that there are two detectors thousands of miles apart, in Washington and Louisiana. There will be a whole lot of false alarms at each one separately, but it's extremely unlikely that precisely matching earthquakes will occur at both locations at once. (They have other very sophisticated ways of isolating the system from outside noise, too, of course. But I don't think the experiment would be viable without the two location filter.) As for space, the LISA project has been trying to get funding for years. (The preliminary "LISA Pathfinder" mission launched on Dec. 3, so there's finally some real progress on this: http://sci.esa.int/lisa-pathfinder/ http://sci.esa.int/lisa-pathfinder/)
rubidium 11y ago
They want to do this in space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Laser_Interferometer_S... Funding is limited though, and doing it on the ground is easier to develop and maintain/troubleshoot.
gaur 11y ago
> This is also the first thing that came to my mind. How do the filter noise? Or are we missing something that is not described in the article? The mirrors are suspended from pendula: https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/sus.html https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/sus.html

by ccozan 11y ago

Steuard 11y ago

As I understand it, this is one of the main reasons that there are two detectors thousands of miles apart, in Washington and Louisiana. There will be a whole lot of false alarms at each one separately, but it's extremely unlikely that precisely matching earthquakes will occur at both locations at once. (They have other very sophisticated ways of isolating the system from outside noise, too, of course. But I don't think the experiment would be viable without the two location filter.) As for space, the LISA project has been trying to get funding for years. (The preliminary "LISA Pathfinder" mission launched on Dec. 3, so there's finally some real progress on this: http://sci.esa.int/lisa-pathfinder/ http://sci.esa.int/lisa-pathfinder/)

rubidium 11y ago

They want to do this in space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Laser_Interferometer_S... Funding is limited though, and doing it on the ground is easier to develop and maintain/troubleshoot.

gaur 11y ago

> This is also the first thing that came to my mind. How do the filter noise? Or are we missing something that is not described in the article? The mirrors are suspended from pendula: https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/sus.html https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/sus.html