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well, please explain this gravity gradient thing to me again, does it have to do with the density of the one hole as compared with the other, or the density of the solar flare as opposed to the Sun proper? The distance from the holes, judging by the scale of the simulations of GW150914 would be just a few hundred miles...way to close to include whole stars and galaxies in the picture, so somebody's scale is off, but whether the two circling holes are a hundred miles apart, or 1000 miles apart, during their last second death spiral, the idea is the same, that their gravity is basically coming from the same tiny area of space, before, during and after merger. So where does the gravity gradient come from during the last milliseconds, that was not there a second earlier and a second later? what happens at merger that turns 3 solar masses into gravity wave? https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=YNCiW0yZ&id=3A21F794B4983B244C5B9EFA984CB23B466AC320&thid=OIP.YNCiW0yZvHI2waY0PALFbwEsCo&q=GW150914&simid=608003693727713809&selectedIndex=4&ajaxhist=0 take the average distance between two stars as lets say a ly and look at the closest 2 and see how many times that distance would fit across the diameter of one of the simulated holes

"In the latest LIGO event, a black hole 19 times the mass of the sun and another black hole 31 times the sun’s mass, married to make a single hole of 49 solar masses. During the last frantic moments of the merger, they were shedding more energy in the form of gravitational waves than all the stars in the observable universe". Is a quote from an article on the June 2017LIGO event. I am thinking that this in conjunction with the small wattage usually put out by rotating masses in the form of gravitational waves points to a possibility that imatfaal's quote about equal to all the energy of all the light from all the stars in the observable universe might be a misunderstanding. It appears that the energy put off by a star in the form of gravitational waves is very much smaller than the energy put off by the same star in the form of electromagnetic radiation. still, the size thing gets me if two things get around each other in a second and the speed of light is 186,000 miles a second, and the thing at the last instant before merger is going .6C that means in a second it went at most 111,600 miles in a circle. the Dec event the holes orbited 27 time in the last second before merger, meaning the circumference of the orbit was 4133 miles Divided by pi for a diameter that is 1,316 miles as the max diameter of either hole. Despite the mass being huge, equal to scores of suns, the size was tiny. An if you add in the size of the event horizons of each of the holes, there could be no optical differenciation between the two, prior merger, so why do the computer simulations show optically, two holes? And if the two masses were so close to each other anyway, what is the difference between prior merger and a spinning mass after merger, in terms of gravity? That is, what is so special about the merger that the act should shed 3 solar masses worth of energy in the form of gravity wave?

That size thing brings up a point that I am wondering about. The computer simulations of the two black holes that merged that produced GW150914 showed two giant masses, black holes with stars and galaxies around them. As in really big. If the last moments before merger each of the pair was moving at .6C that means they must have been really small to get around each other. Not the size of two galaxies that would take a quarter million years to circumvent each other at the speed of light, but the size of small planets, or basketballs or something. We don't have any instruments that could resolve such small masses into two masses to begin with. Why would we consider the thing to be optically two things? very energetic, and very big are not the same thing imatfaal, But if my eye can detect a couple photons out of the trillions a single star puts off in my direction, and that star puts off trillions in all directions, and all the energy output of all the stars, is just a fraction of the energy put out in one wave at black hole merger in the form of a gw, then the merger should have indeed shook the place. But how much energy is put off, in the form of gravitation wave, when a huge solar flare jets out of a rotating Sun. Enough I would think, for a properly constructed gw detector to pick up. If my eye can pick up an electron dropping an energy level in a hydrogen atom 4 lys away, that is. Regards, TAR

DrP, My statement was not meant to say that detecting a gravitation wave was not important. My thought was merely that if a tiny thing a billion lyrs away shouting can register, then that implies a big thing close by would also bend space, but at a different frequency and amplitude, and if only a tiny really dense pair of black holes can even generate a wave, what does detecting that wave do for us. If we are to learn anything by it, I would imagine that how to sense gravitational ripples would be one of the things. If we can never hope to sense anything but the loudest shouts from small dense objects from way long ago, and way far away, then what utility does it have for our survival? Regards, TAR ...really tiny things spinning around each other, bending space a billion light years away...an electron dropping a quantum piece of energy in the person of a photon that bends the electric and magnetic fields for a billion lys to get detected by the sensor at the end of our telescope. I once heard that the light of a match on the surface of a new moon, would put off enough light to be detected by a human eye on Earth. Why would it be impossible to pick up a gravity wave generated by an orbiting moon of Jupiter?

Well, then if the only thing we can hear is black holes merging a billion years ago, what's the point? if we can hear a chirp as a tiny thing a billion lys away spins, why can we not theoretically hear a big lumpy thing humming close by? amplitude, I would think is also correlated to distance from the source

Silvestru, I can just give the example of the universe, as somthing. Whether that came from something like a point of something, or just came into existence from nothing, is something I have no knowledge of. jus But if the universe popped into existence, at a time when other than the universe, there was nothing, then the universe is an example of something that came from nothing. If we are imagining that the universe evolved from a hot dense state, then the question is was the hot dense state a description of a state of matter and energy, space and time that could have a different description if you knew what the arrangement was prior to or outside the hot dense state. So let's cede each other a point from which the universe emerged. Now what about the point. Was the point something. What can we say about the point. What characteristics and internal entities were present. Just a singularity? So existence either sprang from 0, or it sprang from 1...looks however, with all the symmetries and pairs around that it most likely sprang from 2. But my point to Strange, was that if you are looking for an example of something that came from nothing, just look around. There is nothing that is here, that was here when the universe was a singularity. Regards, TAR or when the universe was in the hot dense state...except maybe the elemental particles that made up the hot dense state which are still here, just in different arrangements and separations, but basically, the entities that are here did not exist, until they did

Mordred, Understood, but not looking to filter anything out. Imagine for instance how many "things" you have noticed by studying Google Earth. Nobody is filtering out trees because you are looking for railroad tracks. You can't see the forest without being able to see the trees. And there is no way, from the pictures to discern whether a feature is natural or manmade. You have to combine your senses, and your memory and the information from various sources to tell what a thing is. Like the lines on the bottom of the ocean created from sounding data gleaned from a particular ship on a particular course, the actual shape of the bottom has to be imagined by filling in the blanks between the lines. Imagine just taking the data and finding some way to display it in 3D 360 degrees, and overlay the display over an actual 180 degree view above the detector and superimpose a view taken from the opposite point on the Earth. Then you could "see" what to associate with what. Regards, TAR I am thinking of using the twelve sections of the sphere idea to create a planetarium idea both above and below. Up would be of course up from wherever the planetarium is located, but every panel on the inside surface of the sphere would be exactly associated with that direction from the center of the Earth. Any real time information from camera or telescope or radio telescope could be displayed. Once three interferometers are online, the triangulated direction of any and all signals can be displayed.

Mordred, Makes me wonder if some if not most of the "noise" we throw out, is actually signal. I am thinking again of the chirp we "heard". We are not listening for long slow rumbles or hums of various pitches as we probably should be. The periods we should be listening for are not to be measured in milliseconds, but in days and months and years and centuries and millennia and eons. A different attitude toward the data might be in order. Don't "look" for a pattern. Just look at ALL the data, and "see" the patterns that actually exist. It might be analogous to a cloudy day. Even though you are not going to see the sun, or the moon, it is still going to be light outside and the tides are still going to cycle. Regards, TAR

aramis720, While I have the same problem as you do, trying to figure out what stays the same and what varies here, one way to look at it, is to think backward, as in what would cause a beam to leave at one frequency, get split, go down one arm and come back blueshifted at the same time as the other half of the beam comes back from the normal arm redshifted or vice-a-versa? Regards, TAR

Lord Antares, Your quote explains that the interferometer is tuned so the waves cancel each other out. As in no signal. If an arm gets "bumped", contracted by a gravity wave or expanded by a gravity wave, the waves coming from one arm or the other will arrive at the return sensor out of phase for the duration of the distortion. Hence on that day in September, there was a "chirp", a signal where the light merged back from the tuned arms was not, for that moment, in sync. I would imagine, after the wave passed, the instrument went immediately back to the no signal, tuned, in phase condition, or as Mordred suggested, a quarter wavelength out of phase, so as the one arm's sine wave's peak, arrived coincidently with the other arm's sine wave's trough and vice-a-versa. Mordred, you confused me when you said "Step 1) split a signal with amplitude of x. When you recombine the two signals as they are identical you have complementary waves = constructive interference. The amplitude will be the sum of the two waves." ​However, now after reading through some posts again I think I see where aramis720 and I were getting hung up. Yes, the light waves and the mirrors and the space in the one arm were all getting strained one way or the other together, but that is not why the experiment is faulty, that is why the experiment worked. The only thing that could cause the chirp, once vibrations of the Earth were known not to have contributed, is a distortion of space itself, as if a gravity wave just passed though, squeezing space along one vector, while stretching it along the normal. Regards, TAR Thread, But alas, I am still hung up as to why two black holes spiraling in toward each other would not put out gravity waves with increasing frequency prior the merger. Or why any two orbiting masses do not put out gravity waves. After all as the Earth/moon spins it is sort of like a "lumpy" mass, when taken as one mass. Regards, TAR

​KipIngram, OK to do both, but the thread question is whether or not we can "see" gravitational waves through the data coming from LIGO. If we could "see" Jupiter's gravity, then we would know what gravity looked like, the answer would be yes, and we could then "see" gravity coming from a dark source, and have increased the reach of our senses, through computer simulation, using the actual data as our input and an analogous image as what we experience. Regards, TAR

KipIngram, Understood...but my thought is that if you just "look" at every vibration, you will be looking at the world. You will see the way gravity looks, and you would see the different "look" of Jupiter, as opposed to Neptune. If the goal is simply to verify predictions based on theoretical math, well you have not learned anything about the world. If the goal is to "see" a gravitation wave, well then why not look at them all, get used to what they look like, and maybe learn something new about what the universe is doing, by watching all the gravitational waves passing thou gh.] Oh, THAT's what gravity is doing! My thought being, that our brains are plastic, built to recognize patterns and we have an ingrained understanding of space and time. "Watching" gravity, in real time, by let's say taking the fringe information and simulating what waves are moving through in a model simulation with real time symbolic motion being represented by colors and real time motion of simulated lines and such would be "better" than looking at an equation in terms of comprehending what reality is doing. Regards, TAR Or add in the simulation, the "sound" of the various waves. Like for instance take the range of frequencies your instrument is picking up and translate those in a direct proportional way to our range of hearing. You could then "listen" to the overtones and echoes while you watched, and the understanding would be direct and real, with no statistical analysis required.

KipIngram, Not sure, that throwing out Jupiter's contribution would be the best way to get a "picture" of gravity. I am thinking about how I could tell when a storm was coming close, before I heard the thunder or saw any flashes, by the way the static sounded on my shortwave receiver. Static is "just noise" obscuring a short wave broadcast, but if it is the storm you are listening for, well then, it is not noise. Regards, TAR

A toy truck sitting on the rail would look 100 times bigger than the real truck coming up the road.

KipIngram, Well I am sure you are right. People have already taken such expectation bias into account and in essence performed double blind experiments, but I would be more convinced if somebody that did not know the scream event occurred, gleaned its occurrence from the LIGO data. Just knowing what a thing looks like does not always mean you are seeing that thing when something looks like it. I am thinking that a whisper event, close, would "look" identical to a far away scream. Raising the question, as to why LIGO is not picking up those closer whispers. Regards, TAR

KipIngram, Understood. I should not be thinking micro, when large samples and statistical analysis are in play. But still, in regards to your objection, if the space that everything is occupying changes shape, the photons on average, or as a whole, will be affected by the change in shape. They would take the curved route, thereby going straight. If the signals are then processed and checked against projected expectations of various events at various distances in various directions, until a match is made, there is a certain "Expectancy bias is what sometimes makes double-blind studies necessary. Expectancy bias often creates a fault in your long-term memory. Expectancy bias can change the outcome of an experiment because the results are the effect of the experimenter changing results based on what they think is supposed to happen." Regards, TAR

Mordred, Reading through parts of the links I saw a couple of times that the fringes, properly read and stripped of noise can show, or indicate that space has been warped to the small degree to where a distance, smaller than the width of a proton would be the implied difference between the length of path of the laser in the one arm and the length of path of the laser in the other, indicating that a lumpy neutron star, is therefore spinning somewhere. Seems rather incredible to me. For instance, during the test, suppose, since there is a vacuum next to all mirrors, that a molecule of glass sublimes into the vacuum or falls off the mirror, causing a pit. A photon traveling into this pit would have to go a distance greater than it would have had to go, had the surface been where it was originally, delaying that beam on that leg, on every of multiple reflections, compared to the travel path length on the other leg. Then two molecule of glass could fall off the other leg's mirrors making THAT path longer. And how is the fact that a different part of the gravity wave, in terms of amplitude, is present in the mirror complex during the 1st bounce, as opposed to the 14th bounce, figured in? And most incredible to me, is that an event, like two black holes merging a million or a billion years ago, would cause only one wave, on one particular day, to be picked up on Earth, a billion lys away from the event. That is, would there not be ripples and reflections, build up to, and after shocks? Like the pluck of a guitar string causes a note that is made of many many waves and overtones. Regards, TAR Or North Korea could have covertly tested a nuke on that day.

Strange, My point was that there currently is something. Either that came from nothing or something always was. Even a metapsuedofalse vacuum is something. Regards, TAR

Strange, One thought there though. We have "witnessed" something coming from nothing, as we have evidence, or a model that says our universe emerged from a point, during the Big Bang, which we are evidently still witnessing. However, you might be right, we did not see the speck point emerge from nothing, we do not know what the point was made out of, or whether the point itself came from nothing...but all in all, I would say that either there was nothing before the Big Bang, and the universe therefore sprang forth from nothing, or that the speck came from nothing, or came from something that came from nothing. Either that, or existence is eternal, and the Big Bang is just an event or an entity within a larger something. Regards, TAR But an eternal existence would imply that there is no such thing as nothing.

Thread, I think there will of course be profound revolutions in science. Every generation takes the workable stuff provided by the investigations of their forbearers and improves upon the ideas, folds the progress into new technology and greater reach, and finds "new" avenues to explore. While one cannot predict a new thought, without actually having it, in the first place, I would tend to say that we will find out "how things work" that currently are unanswered questions. Things like we are already suggesting...what is gravity, why does a mass attract a mass, biogenesis, how matter comes into existence, and so on, have to have a reason for being the way they are. Some sort of cause and effect, some rules by which space and time, matter and energy interact to cause some entity to be. Paradigm shifts I think are likely, in terms of what aspects are the most interesting and pertinent to our survival. Interesting to me, are technological advances that make the impossible for anyone, possible for everyone, or at least everyone with funds. But most interesting is how we get "bigger" and smarter and obtain greater reach as a collection, as a collective consciousness. That we can study the slow movement of the plates of the Earth, as if we are watching pond scum pile up in the breeze. My prediction of the next revolution, I think will be related to an expansion of our senses, through technology, into "seeing" the electromagnetic spectrum that surrounds us, that we move through and interact with other items through. Goggles that reach into the infrared and ultraviolet and beyond. Goggles that "see" magnetic fields. Regards, TAR and maybe from that, gravity wave sensors and displays and so on

KipIngram, While considering thought experiments, containing photons, I often wonder how "long lived" a photon is, anyway. That is, any "loss" of photons going around the course would be associated with an increase in temperature of the second level medium that surrounded the fiber of glass. As I understand it, the light effectively reflects off the inside of the boundry between the glass and the surrounding material. But the photons themselves are not traveling through a vacuum, they are traveling through glass. So they must either be finding their way between the atoms of silicon, oxygen, sodium, carbon and calcium, or those said atoms are receiving a photon of energy and releasing a photon of energy of the same size, in, for some reason, in the same direction as the incoming photon was travelling. So, I am not sure what "happens to" a photon anyway. Whether it can be always considered as a discrete, unique unit, or thing, which has a born on date and a dead date, or whether it becomes merely the impulse, of that packet of energy, which can reside, for moments in forms other than photons, in the energy level of an electron of an atom that goes higher once hit by the "death" of a photon, and relaxes back to a lower level, when releasing a newborn photon. Regards, TAR For instance, if a photon is released from a Helium atom at the center of the Sun, does it ever "get out" of the Sun, or is it absorbed by a nearby other atom of helium, which then releases a "new" photon. so when light bounces off a mirror, is it that same photon, actually somehow changing direction, or is the silver on the back of the glass, absorbing a photon and birthing a new one?

Thread, Just thinking. "Stored" can be thought of in terms of put it in now, get it out later. How about a fiber optic cable, with both ends in your hand? Shine a light in one end, and it comes out a fraction of a second later, from the other. A large enough coil of a ​​strand of fiber optic cable, of a very large length would allow one to design a setup where the one end was fused back into the entry end, at a small angle like an entrance ramp onto a highway to where the light coming around the second time would take the course again, and again the third and successive times. This way the entry point would not be a likely exit point, and one could, by continually pumping light into the course, increase the amount of light traveling in the fiber. And if the entryway and an off ramp where designed to open and close in some manner, pulses of light going into the course, could be timed, so that the majority of the light was in one section of the course, at a time, analogous to the pack going around a speedway. Then the exit way could be switched open, like a train track switch, while the pack was in the middle of the course, and when it came around, out it would come. One could imagine this, as storing light. Regards, TAR

Some memory of mine suggests that because of some of the wave aspects of light, there would be a lot going on in the cavity, and depending on the wavelengths​ ​going in, and the angles of reflections and the geometry of the cavity, there could be some canceling out and doubling up, in terms of amplitude of the waves, and I am not quite sure thought experiment wise, if you can rely on just imagining more and more particles, or rely on imagining stronger and stronger waves. Especially since waves have peaks and troughs and polarization characteristics and the like, that would have to be taken into consideration.

So, we are talking about pumping photons into a cavity of some sort, with 100% reflective internal surface, to keep them bouncing, or being absorbed, and reemitted to the point that when we uncork the bottle, a very strong pulse of photons would come out, that could then do work, in a short time, equal to the work the steady stream of photons, over a long time, could have done. Might as well initially turn the steady stream of photons into chemical, potential or kinetic energy and store it in that form. however, the idea of focusing seems to have some potential that is, if one could focus the infrared wavelengths coming from the car, heated in the sun, like a magnifying glass focuses the sunlight and catches a piece of paper on fire, then the car itself becomes a photon battery, as studiot suggests I never fully proved my theory or consistently reproduced the effect, but I once noticed a helium party balloon, shaped like a lens felt like a little warmth was coming off it, as if the balloon was focusing unordered infrared energy on the other side of balloon, on a point where I had my hand. can not remember the surfaces of the balloon as in which side was silver or purple so I can not suggest an experiment, but theory wise, I wonder if infrared photons can be focused

Maybe a little better than that. Attempt to be a "good" person. Provide dopamine for yourself and make it possible for others to have the same. Do the right thing.