4 ms·

Could you, in effect with this level of precision, get a bonus of a gravity wave detector?

by Zenst 3y ago

colechristensen 3y ago
LIGO detects the changes in distance between mirrors down to 1/10000th of a proton 1 atto-light-second is a few hydrogen atoms long. So still seems like quite a few orders of magnitude needed for gravity wave detection but perhaps with the lengths involved? Some more expertise is needed. I would guess probably not but also not so far off as to be crazy.
- deleted 3y ago
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raattgift 3y ago
No, not as such. It will have application in gravitational wave astronomy, not least because tighter bounds on delta-t among detector sites means tighter localization of sources on the sky. More likely the technique will find its way into time transfer to and among spacecraft equipped with good atomic clocks, which will help with studies of the weak gravitation within the solar system (checking if GR is correct in that limit, and possibly doing some low-hanging fruit on local dark matter detection, e.g. if there is a tail or wake entrained to Jupiter or the sun), pulsar timings (a big announcement on that is coming next week from NANOGrav), and a number of other interesting experiments. If you're curious about the technical details of that, you can check out the Wolf, Salomon and Reynaud ACES and SAGAS IAU paper doi:10.1017/S1743921309990676 which can be found in its 2009 form as a PDF at <https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/5170B8A137DCE6897489FCCF1DD27A13/S1743921309990676a.pdf/space-clocks-to-test-relativiy-aces-and-sagas.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...>, which is a good starting point for verification of general relativity enabled by space clocks and time transfer to/among them. On the gravitational wave astronomy front, good time distribution to enhanced LISA <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...> or its precursors would help with multimessenger observing: one might better correlate an IceCube neutrino detection and a LISA detection, for example, if at the South Pole one can benefit from ground-space-ground time distribution considered on p. 8-9 (and see Fig 5) of <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.12541.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.12541.pdf>, which is the preprint of the paper summarized in the article linked at the top. I hope this relates to what you were asking about. I'm afraid I don't understand the points raised in the other replies to your question.

Could you, in effect with this level of precision, get a bonus of a gravity wave detector?

by Zenst 3y ago

Could you, in effect with this level of precision, get a bonus of a gravity wave detector?

LIGO detects the changes in distance between mirrors down to 1/10000th of a proton 1 atto-light-second is a few hydrogen atoms long. So still seems like quite a few orders of magnitude needed for gravity wave detection but perhaps with the lengths involved? Some more expertise is needed. I would guess probably not but also not so far off as to be crazy.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

raattgift 3y ago

No, not as such. It will have application in gravitational wave astronomy, not least because tighter bounds on delta-t among detector sites means tighter localization of sources on the sky. More likely the technique will find its way into time transfer to and among spacecraft equipped with good atomic clocks, which will help with studies of the weak gravitation within the solar system (checking if GR is correct in that limit, and possibly doing some low-hanging fruit on local dark matter detection, e.g. if there is a tail or wake entrained to Jupiter or the sun), pulsar timings (a big announcement on that is coming next week from NANOGrav), and a number of other interesting experiments. If you're curious about the technical details of that, you can check out the Wolf, Salomon and Reynaud ACES and SAGAS IAU paper doi:10.1017/S1743921309990676 which can be found in its 2009 form as a PDF at <https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/5170B8A137DCE6897489FCCF1DD27A13/S1743921309990676a.pdf/space-clocks-to-test-relativiy-aces-and-sagas.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...>, which is a good starting point for verification of general relativity enabled by space clocks and time transfer to/among them. On the gravitational wave astronomy front, good time distribution to enhanced LISA <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...> or its precursors would help with multimessenger observing: one might better correlate an IceCube neutrino detection and a LISA detection, for example, if at the South Pole one can benefit from ground-space-ground time distribution considered on p. 8-9 (and see Fig 5) of <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.12541.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.12541.pdf>, which is the preprint of the paper summarized in the article linked at the top. I hope this relates to what you were asking about. I'm afraid I don't understand the points raised in the other replies to your question.