3 ms·
The degree of engineering required to detect gravitational waves, level of precision, it’s both incredibly difficult technically, and very expensive. Unless you
by QAPereo 9y ago
The degree of engineering required to detect gravitational waves, level of precision, it’s both incredibly difficult technically, and very expensive. Unless you’re looking to detect gravitational waves we would have no reason to engage in that kind of expense and difficulty, so no fiber optics will never be that for us.
- stephengillie 9y agoDetecting earthquakes accurately (mostly by subtracting noise) has historically been technically difficult, as well. I wonder how many orders of magnitude more noise reduction is required for gravitational waves, as compared to earthquakes.
- infogulch 9y agoThe sensitivity of LIGO is in the range of some ten thousandths of a proton. [1] Many orders of magnitude I imagine. [1]: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ligos-ifo https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ligos-ifo
- QAPereo 9y agoA couple of dozen orders at least.
- maxxxxx 9y agoIt's hard to even imagine this kind of precision. I wonder what would happen if a gravitational wave would hit us that would cause displacement on the same order of magnitude an earthquake causes. Would this rip the planet apart or would just nothing happen?
- QAPereo 9y agoTo experience that, you’d need to be so close to some very extreme event (neutron star merger for example) that you’d already be in desperate trouble, and a planet wouldn’t hold together. You could hypothetically experience something less impressive than an earthquake, but less impressive than having your atoms strung out like spaghetti. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/338912/how-would-a-passing-gravitational-wave-look-or-feel https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/338912/how-would...