2 ms·
Another point worth making: we gain more by upgrading than by running. Since our search volume is naturally the cube of our max search distance, a twofold incr
by stefco_ 9y ago
Another point worth making: we gain more by upgrading than by running.
Since our search volume is naturally the cube of our max search distance, a twofold increase in range yields and eightfold yield in search volume, and hence event rate.
Put another way, if you can get better than a 30% increase in search distance by upgrading half of the time and running the other half, you're doing better than breaking even (1.3^3 > 2) because your increase in event rate more than makes up for the downtime.
This is why it actually makes more sense for us to do these thorough, ambitious upgrades than to just leave the detectors on all the time.
- jcims 9y agoHas anyone calculated whether or not LIGO et. al. could detect the mass energy conversion of a nuke going off?
- stefco_ 9y agoA nuke wouldn't emit measurable GWs, but it would emit seismic waves. There are seismometers that are highly optimized for this task; LIGO, on the other hand, has extremely advanced damping technology designed to filter out seismic and other environmental vibrations. I don't know the details of nuclear-detonation induced seismic activity, but it seems to me that LIGO would be a very inefficient observational tool. That said, I don't know if anyone has looked at our data in the vicinity of e.g. DPRK nuclear tests to see if any nuclear detonations are visible in the strain timeseries.