Ripples in Spacetime by Govert Schilling

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Pikaia Great Britain
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Ripples in Spacetime by Govert Schilling

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Post by Pikaia »


I have just finished this book about gravitational wave astronomy, and I can highly recommend it.

It describes the history from Einstein up to the first confirmed detection in 2015, and on up to May 2018. It also describes highly ambitious future plans for space-based detectors to search for lower frequency waves, as well as other plans to detect waves with frequencies of many YEARS, from pairs of super-massive black holes, by studying the timing of pulsars.

One fact that surprised me is that the amplitude of these waves depends on the inverse of the distance, not the square of the distance, as you might expect.

I was amused that there was a protocol to prevent leaks of false detections, but rumours of the first detection spread like wildfire anyway. If we ever discover aliens, an even bigger news story, there would appear to be no chance that it will be kept secret because scientists just can't keep their big mouths shut!
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Re: Ripples in Spacetime by Govert Schilling

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Post by notFritzArgelander »


It's solely due to the slower energy fall off with distance that gravitational wave experiments are practical. The events are so rare per galaxy that a huge volume of galaxies needs to be sampled to get a decent probability of detection.

The reason is that unlike EM where you need to detect the square of the wave amplitude (that's proportional to the energy) one can get away with detecting the amplitude with gravity.
Scopes: Refs: Orion ST80, SV 80EDA f7, TS 102ED f11 Newts: AWB 130mm, f5, Z12 f5; Cats: VMC110L, Intes MK66,VMC200L f9.75 EPs: KK Fujiyama Orthoscopics, 2x Vixen NPLs (40-6mm) and BCOs, Baader Mark IV zooms, TV Panoptics, Delos, Plossl 32-8mm. Mixed brand Masuyama/Astroplans Binoculars: Nikon Aculon 10x50, Celestron 15x70, Baader Maxbright. Mounts: Star Seeker IV, Vixen Porta II, Celestron CG5
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