6 ms·

This thing was a billion light years away. Say it were closer; let's put it at a single light year away. LIGO measures wave amplitude, as far as I can tell, w

This thing was a billion light years away. Say it were closer; let's put it at a single light year away. LIGO measures wave amplitude, as far as I can tell, which goes down linearly with distance (unlike wave energy, which goes down quadratically, since it's proportional to square of the amplitude). So we could expect to see an effect about a billion times bigger. The detected effect was a change in metric of one part in 6e20 if I'm not mistaken: (4e-3 * (diameter of proton))/4km based on the article's claim of "four one-thousandths of the diameter of a proton". So at one light year distance we could expect an effect of one part in 6e11. Not really visible on the human scale, seems to me. You could detect it easily with something like the Mössbauer effect, I expect. Your typical lab bench laser interferometer has errors on the order of 1 in 1e6 as far as I can tell, so probably wouldn't be able to pick this up. Disclaimer: I could be totally off on what a lab bench laser interferometer can do. I'm pretty confident in the rest of the numbers above.

yellow_postit 11y ago
What I didn't understand after reading the article is how do they separate out a set of waves for one specific thing vs. the many other objects sending out waves. Is it just that the set of blackholes are the strongest set of waves and thus the ones we can detect?
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  That, and the high frequency. For example, the Earth orbiting the Sun produces gravitational waves at a frequency that's about (factors of 2 and pi here and there) the orbital frequency; order of 1e-8 Hz. The black holes were producing 250Hz waves if I read the article right.
scrumper 11y ago
I see, thanks.
ISL 11y ago
The longer the interferometer arms, the better you can do in sensitivity. The reason LIGO has 4000 m long arms is that it makes the experiment 4000x more sensitive than something you can do on a bench. (and their laser stabilization is excellent, improving things further)
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  Sure, but LIGO is sensitive at something like 1 part in 1e20, which is a lot more than 4000x better than 1 part in 1e6. I agree that their laser stabilization is likely much better, their vacuum is likely a lot better, etc. I was just surprised by how much better, I guess; 10 orders of magnitude is a lot.
  - astrosi 11y ago
    Part of the reason for that is that LIGO isn't exactly a Michaelson interferometer in that it has an extra pair of mirrors in each arm. If you look at this schematic [1] then in a traditional Michaelson interferometer you would only have the mirrors that are at the end of both arms. With LIGO there is an extra set of mirrors within the arms this allows the light from the laser to bounce between them ~100 times or so increasing the effective path length greatly. [1] https://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/colwell/rc03_ligo/img009.jpg https://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/colwell/rc03_ligo/img009.j...
    - bzbarsky 11y ago
      Ah, neat. Did not know that!
swombat 11y ago
On the other hand, we may well detect the 3 solar masses radiated away as energy. That decreases as an inverse square law, so as one solar mass is about 10^30kg, and 1kg gives off about 10^17 J, we're talking about an explosion releasing something around 10^47 J. For comparison, a 1 kiloton nuclear bomb gives off about 10^15 J. So, inverse square that explosion... 1 light year is about 10^16m, so we square that and get 10^32m, so we're now talking about ... 10^15 J. So, unless my maths is all off (which is possible), if this happened about a light year away, whoever's on the side facing towards the blast wouldn't get to observe very much because they'd feel as if a 1kt nuke just went off above their head. Not a great way to start the day. Chances are it would wipe out life on Earth too, through the ensuing side-effects like lighting the atmosphere on fire, sterilising half the planet, significantly heating up the oceans, possibly even stripping part of the atmosphere away, etc. For a great novel based around a strikingly similar premise to what was just observed (and the main reason I even bothered to calculate this), Diaspora by Greg Egan is a fantastic book.
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  The big question is how much of the energy would get transferred in practice. I agree that 3 solar masses worth of electromagnetic radiation at 1 light year distance would feel like a nuke going off. What I don't know is to what extent the energy of the equivalent gravitational waves (which _would_ have a lot of energy I agree) would actually get transferred to things we care about, like the atmosphere and us. If it's a few percent, say, we'd clearly be in trouble. If it's more like what neutrinos do, it would probably be detectable but probably not by unaided human senses. I tried doing some quick looking around for estimates of gravitational wave coupling and energy transfer and didn't find anything so far...
  - platz 11y ago
    I would like to understand why a gravitational wave distorts length in relation to normal gravity wells; specifically is this particular to waves? Why don't lengths get distorted in a normal gravity well, or do they? In essence, what is different between a gravity wave and a gravity well, which i understand both distort space, but only the wave distorts it in a way we can measure? Does the gravity well change lengths proportionally in all directions and thus isnt measurable?

yellow_postit 11y ago

What I didn't understand after reading the article is how do they separate out a set of waves for one specific thing vs. the many other objects sending out waves. Is it just that the set of blackholes are the strongest set of waves and thus the ones we can detect?

bzbarsky 11y ago
That, and the high frequency. For example, the Earth orbiting the Sun produces gravitational waves at a frequency that's about (factors of 2 and pi here and there) the orbital frequency; order of 1e-8 Hz. The black holes were producing 250Hz waves if I read the article right.

scrumper 11y ago

I see, thanks.

ISL 11y ago

The longer the interferometer arms, the better you can do in sensitivity. The reason LIGO has 4000 m long arms is that it makes the experiment 4000x more sensitive than something you can do on a bench. (and their laser stabilization is excellent, improving things further)

bzbarsky 11y ago
Sure, but LIGO is sensitive at something like 1 part in 1e20, which is a lot more than 4000x better than 1 part in 1e6. I agree that their laser stabilization is likely much better, their vacuum is likely a lot better, etc. I was just surprised by how much better, I guess; 10 orders of magnitude is a lot.
- astrosi 11y ago
  Part of the reason for that is that LIGO isn't exactly a Michaelson interferometer in that it has an extra pair of mirrors in each arm. If you look at this schematic [1] then in a traditional Michaelson interferometer you would only have the mirrors that are at the end of both arms. With LIGO there is an extra set of mirrors within the arms this allows the light from the laser to bounce between them ~100 times or so increasing the effective path length greatly. [1] https://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/colwell/rc03_ligo/img009.jpg https://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/colwell/rc03_ligo/img009.j...
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    Ah, neat. Did not know that!

swombat 11y ago

On the other hand, we may well detect the 3 solar masses radiated away as energy. That decreases as an inverse square law, so as one solar mass is about 10^30kg, and 1kg gives off about 10^17 J, we're talking about an explosion releasing something around 10^47 J. For comparison, a 1 kiloton nuclear bomb gives off about 10^15 J. So, inverse square that explosion... 1 light year is about 10^16m, so we square that and get 10^32m, so we're now talking about ... 10^15 J. So, unless my maths is all off (which is possible), if this happened about a light year away, whoever's on the side facing towards the blast wouldn't get to observe very much because they'd feel as if a 1kt nuke just went off above their head. Not a great way to start the day. Chances are it would wipe out life on Earth too, through the ensuing side-effects like lighting the atmosphere on fire, sterilising half the planet, significantly heating up the oceans, possibly even stripping part of the atmosphere away, etc. For a great novel based around a strikingly similar premise to what was just observed (and the main reason I even bothered to calculate this), Diaspora by Greg Egan is a fantastic book.

bzbarsky 11y ago
The big question is how much of the energy would get transferred in practice. I agree that 3 solar masses worth of electromagnetic radiation at 1 light year distance would feel like a nuke going off. What I don't know is to what extent the energy of the equivalent gravitational waves (which _would_ have a lot of energy I agree) would actually get transferred to things we care about, like the atmosphere and us. If it's a few percent, say, we'd clearly be in trouble. If it's more like what neutrinos do, it would probably be detectable but probably not by unaided human senses. I tried doing some quick looking around for estimates of gravitational wave coupling and energy transfer and didn't find anything so far...
- platz 11y ago
  I would like to understand why a gravitational wave distorts length in relation to normal gravity wells; specifically is this particular to waves? Why don't lengths get distorted in a normal gravity well, or do they? In essence, what is different between a gravity wave and a gravity well, which i understand both distort space, but only the wave distorts it in a way we can measure? Does the gravity well change lengths proportionally in all directions and thus isnt measurable?