3 ms·

> Of course, there’s a catch with catching gravitons. The necessary sensing technology doesn’t quite yet exist. That's, uh, kind of a big detail to not mention

by jawns 2y ago

> Of course, there’s a catch with catching gravitons. The necessary sensing technology doesn’t quite yet exist. That's, uh, kind of a big detail to not mention until the fourth paragraph from the bottom.

XorNot 2y ago
It's because there's no need to build it until you need to do this experiment though - this is the sort of bounds-pushing which top-end physics always does (i.e. before the LHC was built, sensors as good as ATLAS didn't exist, before LIGO the necessary interferometers didn't exist). What they're proposing to build thought is however a logical refinement of established and demonstrated physical principles - it's entangling the vibrational state of a the big block of Aluminum to a system which you can more easily read out without disturbing it (examples in the literature seem to include circulating currents in super-conducting loops - so you can spectroscopically probe the state of the vibrating thing by looking at shifts in the emission/absorption of your superconductor, which is much easier). Basically it is an experimental setup which is achievable with technology we would want to build anyway as a refinement of existing work.
philipov 2y ago
It's easy to forget sometimes that the people taking it for granted that the technology doesn't exist yet are also the people whose work results in that technology being created. Of course it doesn't exist yet. Needing to invent better sensors, or better magnets, for the sake of running an experiment like this, is what causes those technologies to exist.
dotnet00 2y ago
That can seem like a big deal at first, but it's pretty normal since these things are at the cutting edge of technology. Theories or highly simplified versions of experimental techniques are often proposed decades before the technology finally catches up to the level where those theories can be properly tested, or where those experimental techniques can be performed at a useful level. For example, a lot of the technology needed to make the JWST did not exist when work on it started, it was developed specifically for JWST, or happened to be developed as they were working on it. Same goes for a lot of the capabilities of particle accelerators.

by jawns 2y ago

XorNot 2y ago

It's because there's no need to build it until you need to do this experiment though - this is the sort of bounds-pushing which top-end physics always does (i.e. before the LHC was built, sensors as good as ATLAS didn't exist, before LIGO the necessary interferometers didn't exist). What they're proposing to build thought is however a logical refinement of established and demonstrated physical principles - it's entangling the vibrational state of a the big block of Aluminum to a system which you can more easily read out without disturbing it (examples in the literature seem to include circulating currents in super-conducting loops - so you can spectroscopically probe the state of the vibrating thing by looking at shifts in the emission/absorption of your superconductor, which is much easier). Basically it is an experimental setup which is achievable with technology we would want to build anyway as a refinement of existing work.

philipov 2y ago

It's easy to forget sometimes that the people taking it for granted that the technology doesn't exist yet are also the people whose work results in that technology being created. Of course it doesn't exist yet. Needing to invent better sensors, or better magnets, for the sake of running an experiment like this, is what causes those technologies to exist.

dotnet00 2y ago

That can seem like a big deal at first, but it's pretty normal since these things are at the cutting edge of technology. Theories or highly simplified versions of experimental techniques are often proposed decades before the technology finally catches up to the level where those theories can be properly tested, or where those experimental techniques can be performed at a useful level. For example, a lot of the technology needed to make the JWST did not exist when work on it started, it was developed specifically for JWST, or happened to be developed as they were working on it. Same goes for a lot of the capabilities of particle accelerators.