3 ms·
Detecting earthquakes accurately (mostly by subtracting noise) has historically been technically difficult, as well. I wonder how many orders of magnitude more
by stephengillie 9y ago
Detecting 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...