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Gravitational waves are among the most difficult physical phenomena to detect directly, because of the very small size of the effects involved and the huge mass
by yodon 10y ago
Gravitational waves are among the most difficult physical phenomena to detect directly, because of the very small size of the effects involved and the huge masses required to cause those small effects (one commonly encounters numbers like 10^-51 when doing gravitational wave calculations). The original experimental demonstration of gravitational waves was from analyzing the change in rotational frequency over time of an orbiting binary pulsar and computing that the energy loss in the system was precisely matched by the general relativistic prediction of energy radiated away in gravitational waves. The importance of this work was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics [0].
[0] http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/research/gravity/tutorial/?page=3thehulsetaylor http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/research/gravity/tutorial/?pa...
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- ab5tract 10y agoCan someone please explain why such waves that supposedly have minimal/hard-to-detect effects are somehow valid explanations for pushing around black holes? Meanwhile, electrical forces are clearly powerful and yet still neglected in the mainstream.
- pertymcpert 10y agoAre you an "electric universe" believer? Black holes by definition can't emit EM radiation, so their only way to emit energy (ignoring hawking radiation which is tiny) is through gravitational waves. Due to the conservation of momentum, to be ejected from the core must be a result of some amount of momentum in the opposite direction.
- ab5tract 10y agoNo. I am a black magic^W "matter/energy" skeptic.
- grigjd3 10y ago1. Electromagnetic radiation has been the primary tool of astronomers and astrophysicist since before the first telescope. It is not "neglected" by any stretch of the imagination. 2. At large scales, the total number of electrons and protons tend to balance and thus result in electrically neutral objects.
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