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Yes, the experimental details are stunning, particularly with an experimental physics background. As someone who had a narrow escape from a PhD working on reso
by gnufx 7y ago
Yes, the experimental details are stunning, particularly with an experimental physics background.
As someone who had a narrow escape from a PhD working on resonant bar-type detection attempts, I've never understood how those were ever thought to be sensitive enough -- whether decent calculations just weren't available or what. Unfortunately, you're typically not in a good position to evaluate such things before starting the work.
- effie 7y agoWeber's initial calculations and experiments with bar detectors were a reasonable effort, because gravitational waves were something that nobody believed in. Bar detector has an advantage - it is cheap. A strong enough wave could excite it and it would have been great and cheap discovery. But later when nothing was being reliably detected, people turned to more expensive interferometric detector. Today it is believed the bar type detector could only detect extreme events nearby, which are very unlikely.