blike Posted February 19, 2003 Posted February 19, 2003 The worlds first gravity wave detector has been completed and is set to begin operations soon. The device consists of two installations, one in Louisiana and one in Washington state. Each installation has two 4km long vacuum tunnels into which lasers are fired and bounced off mirrors at the other end. The returning light beam is analyzed for disturbances. Dr Harry Ward explained "The effect of a gravitational wave - if you imagine it propagating towards you - would be to lengthen space between your head and feet, and contract your width. It distorts you in that way. "So the way we try to detect gravitational waves is to lay out, L-shape, a set of mirrors. The gravity waves would shorten one arm between two mirrors while simultaneously lengthening the other arm between two mirrors." The device is supposed to be able to measure deviations as small as 1/1000th the width of a proton. Two installations were built to help rule out natural phenomenon which could disturb the data. From BBC
aman Posted February 22, 2003 Posted February 22, 2003 I imagine they calibrate for the solar system phenomena but if there are moving black holes and dark matter concentrations they might be drifting out of calibration slowly all the time. It will be interesting to see what they are up against. Just aman
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