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Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

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Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#31
post #21

Not to sound condescending, but… You can transmit data by modulating in on top of something that propagates through space? Well, big deal, who'd thought? /s In all seriousness, the big problem is, how to create gravitational waves in a controlled manner in the first place. Because the fact remains, that gravity is, by several orders of magnitude, the weakest force in our universe and it takes stooopid amounts of ener…

What does "close to DC" mean? And "end facets of the optical filter"? What is being thrown around?

"close to DC"

I assume he's meaphorically using the term "direct current", so the low frequency stuff. As far as I know, LIGO effectively bandpasses gravitational waves in the range 7 to 30 Hz, or so.

Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous.

I'm not quite sure about the laser facets comment, though.

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#32
post #21

Not to sound condescending, but… You can transmit data by modulating in on top of something that propagates through space? Well, big deal, who'd thought? /s In all seriousness, the big problem is, how to create gravitational waves in a controlled manner in the first place. Because the fact remains, that gravity is, by several orders of magnitude, the weakest force in our universe and it takes stooopid amounts of ener…

What does "close to DC" mean? And "end facets of the optical filter"? What is being thrown around?

> And "end facets of the optical filter"? What is being thrown around?

One of the mirrors of a Fabry-Perot filter mirror pair. It's displaced with an amplitude of ~200µm at a frequency of about 500kHz:

d²/dt² 0.2·10^-3m * sin( t * 2pi * 500·10^3/s) = - 2.0·10^8 pi² sin(…) m/s²

That's about 10Mg of acceleration. Yes, these filters exist, and yes, they do work very well and reliably. These filters are the core technology of FDML lasers. See the patent here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130070794A1/en

You can buy FDML lasers using these very filters from the company I co-founded: https://www.optores.com/index.php/products/31-next-generatio...

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#A_crude_anal... "[F]or instance, a 1-second-life black hole has a mass of 2.28×10^5 kg", and the time taken seems proportional to the cube of the mass. So a 2.28×10^6 kg black hole would take 1000 seconds, and so on. How massive was the black hole in the story?

The story mentions "ten-to-the-seventeenth grams in mass and ten-to-the-minus-eleven centimeters across", but I'm not sure if that's the black hole in question, or a hypothetical one. They definitely mention it being smaller than an atom, though.

Interesting. That's 10^14 kg, which, according to the above, would be between 10^24 and 10^27 seconds to evaporate, which is at least in the quadrillions of years.

As for the radius... Looks like the Schwarzchild radius is proportional to the mass, and for the moon (7x10^22 kg) it's 0.11x10^-3 meters, so this 10^14 kg mass should be maybe 1.5x10^-13 meters, which is 1.5 x 10^-11 cm. Nice. It looks like Niven did his homework.

Incidentally, Wiki says that Hawking argued for black hole evaporation in 1974, and Niven's story won an award in 1975, which I assume might indicate it was published around then. Seems it'd be a close call whether Niven heard about it before publishing his story.

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#A_crude_anal... "[F]or instance, a 1-second-life black hole has a mass of 2.28×10^5 kg", and the time taken seems proportional to the cube of the mass. So a 2.28×10^6 kg black hole would take 1000 seconds, and so on. How massive was the black hole in the story?

The story mentions "ten-to-the-seventeenth grams in mass and ten-to-the-minus-eleven centimeters across", but I'm not sure if that's the black hole in question, or a hypothetical one. They definitely mention it being smaller than an atom, though.

The problem for a hole this size isn't the evaporation time; that's way longer than the age of the universe. The problem is the Hawking radiation pressure.

Some quick formulas (M is mass of the hole in kg):

Evaporation time T = 8.4 x 10^-17 M^3 seconds

Hawking radiation power W = 3.6 x 10^32 / M^2 Watts

Hawking radiation pressure at 10^-10 meters (roughly one atom) distance P = 9.6 x 10^42 / M^2 Pa

(Note that the last formula assumes that the hole's horizon radius is smaller than 10^-10 meters, which it is for Niven's hole.)

For M = 10^14 kg, we get:

T = 8.4 x 10^25 seconds (which is more than 10^18 years)

W = 3.6 x 10^4 Watts (36 kW, comparable to your car's engine traveling on the highway with a family and luggage, but pretty darn bright for something that's basically just a light source)

P = 9.6 x 10^14 Pa (almost 10^10 atmospheres!)

So this hole won't accrete matter, because anything that gets close to it gets violently pushed away by its Hawking radiation. It will tunnel its way through Mars and out the other side, and then back again, executing simple harmonic motion, indefinitely.

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "close to DC" mean? And "end facets of the optical filter"? What is being thrown around?

"close to DC" I assume he's meaphorically using the term "direct current", so the low frequency stuff. As far as I know, LIGO effectively bandpasses gravitational waves in the range 7 to 30 Hz, or so. Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous.…

> Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous.

I didn't see the need for sarcasm tags. But then again, if you're honest about it LIGO is not that much different in _basic principle_ from the Cavendish experiment (measure the displacement of test masses), only that the sensitivity of the displacement detector is a lot of orders of magnitude higher.

And remember that a core step in the Cavendish experiment is to "flip" around the position of the big masses, so there's some kind of gravitational transient pulse event, which, if you're honest about translates into a very broadband spectrum, when compared to the integration time of the experiment.

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"close to DC" I assume he's meaphorically using the term "direct current", so the low frequency stuff. As far as I know, LIGO effectively bandpasses gravitational waves in the range 7 to 30 Hz, or so. Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous.…

> Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous. I didn't see the need for sarcasm tags. But then again, if you're honest about it LIGO is not that much different in _basic principle_ from the Cavendish experiment (measure the displacement of test…

First off, thanks for engaging in a bit of debate. I came off a bit needly when I was trying to allude to a technical point.

I'm guessing that we're talking about different things. If you think of gravitational waves as any non-zero Fourier transform of some gravitational potential, then you and I agree, but that's not what we typically mean by "gravitational waves" which are, formally, metrics admitting a covariantly null vector field.

One reason for the distinction is that in a GR analysis of the 2-body problem, the radial potential energy contains an extra term not in a Newtonian analysis. This is interpreted as energy carried away by gravitational radiation. Even in a classical case, an external observer witnesses a periodic gravitational potential, but only in GR do the waves carry energy and cause Mercury to precess.

The error bars on the early Cavendish experiments were way bigger than any GR correction to Newtonian gravity. As such, we can safely analyze it within the realm of Newtonian mechanics which only admits DC offset "gravitational waves". That was the intent of my original comment.

Actually, as far as I understand it, the Cavendish experiment is simply a static equilibrium analysis. We measure the deflection of a torsion pendulum with and without the test masses present. I'm not sure what you are referring to with the "flipping" procedure, but I'd guess it's more about homogonizing erros rather than generating "force pulses".

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling the Cavendish experiment a measure of gravitational waves, though, is sorta like saying Newton discovered an early theory of relativity. Not wrong, in the most pedantic sense, but definitely a bit disingenuous. I didn't see the need for sarcasm tags. But then again, if you're honest about it LIGO is not that much different in _basic principle_ from the Cavendish experiment (measure the displacement of test…

First off, thanks for engaging in a bit of debate. I came off a bit needly when I was trying to allude to a technical point. I'm guessing that we're talking about different things. If you think of gravitational waves as any non-zero Fourier transform of some gravitational potential, then you and I agree, but that's not what we typically mean by "gravitational waves" which are, formally, metrics admitting a covariantl…

> First off, thanks for engaging in a bit of debate. I came off a bit needly when I was trying to allude to a technical point.

Totally got that, no worries. And yes, I do see where you're coming from. But I base my argument not on the concept of the quasi-static potentials of a field theory with infinite speed of potential propagation (i.e. Newton).

> Even in a classical case, an external observer witnesses a periodic gravitational potential

But this assumes instantaneous propagation of the potential.

In every field theory in which changes (i.e. disturbances) of the field propagate with limited speed any accelerating movement of the generating sources of the field will create waves in that field.

Wiggle around some electric charge and you get EM waves carrying away energy. Einstein's first (and failed) attempt toward a relativistic theory of gravity was to apply the concept of retarded potentials. Didn't work out, something was missing. But even in such a retarted gravitational potentials theory, gravitational waves do show up.

> and cause Mercury to precess.

Isn't the precession of Mercury an effect of contraction of space by mass and that at the radii of perihel and apehel the metric of space is different?

Even the tiniest spec of dust moving at Mercury's orbit should experience the same precession, yet will radiate much less energy away through gravitational waves, as far as I understand it.

> but that's not what we typically mean by "gravitational waves" which are, formally, metrics admitting a covariantly null vector field.

Yes I know, GR permits for additional wave modes, that you don't have in e.g. electrodynamics in the vacuum. But I think it's dishonest to dismis the more "mundane" modes to be not gravitational waves.

As far as I see it, in any field with limited propagation delay, any disturbation propagating through the field is a true wave in a its right in that field. If you want to reach a fundamental theory which can be applied universally without the requirement of a-priori choices being made on the system modelled, all aspects of the theory must be "enabled" all the time.

> As such, we can safely analyze it within the realm of Newtonian mechanics which only admits DC offset "gravitational waves"

… which is what I was saying by having long integration times. And as far as nature goes, in any real system there is no true DC offset, because that would require integration from -inf to +inf. Yes, I did mention "DC", but in a practical sense DC just means "frequency which interval is an order of mangitude longer than the integration time of the observation".

Here's a little food for thought: Say you have an mechanical shutter and shine some long coherene (= narrow bandwidth) laser through it. Then you quickly close and open the shutter. How does the spectrum of the light look like after the shutter? Integrating over the spectrum before and after the shutter does the power change? If so where did the delta in energy go / come from?

This is some practical wave dynamics engineering we laser guys do on a regular base and solely rests on the fact that in a universe of finite age there is no such thing as a true DC component; you can get infinitesimally close to DC, but never reach true DC in the first place. So for example we use (fast) modulators to create spectral sidebands and even do things like carrier and single sideband suppression to shape the light to our bidding; becomes really interesting if you throw nonlinear effects into the mix that allow to all sorts of up-/downconversion.

> I'm not sure what you are referring to with the "flipping" procedure, but I'd guess it's more about homogonizing erros rather than generating "force pulses".

You're remembering right. What you do in the Cavendish experiment is to rotate the big masses by 90° so that the torsion pendulum is twised in the opposite direction, so that offsets in the pendulum cancel out. However consider this: Instead of moving the big masses at descrete times, let them (slowly) oscillate, maybe at the resonance frequency of the pendulum. If the pendulum has a high Q factor it will eventually reach quite the significant oscillation amplitude.

So what is this? I'd say this is energy transfer through gravitational waves in the near field.

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#39
post #19
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you are joking, but transmit information through dimensions using gravity is one interesting conjecture why gravitational force is so much weaker than the other forces. It leaks through dimensions. And maybe this type of communication will be necessary when we have to leave this dimension to hyperspace because of the entropy [1]. [1] http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

For what it’s worth, evidence has come out (explained well by this PBS Space Time episode [1]) that makes the “gravity propagates over more than three spatial dimensions” theory a bit less likely. [1] https://youtu.be/3HYw6vPR9qU

Interesting video, so it is possible that there is no leak after all, but I think this does not prove that there are no extra dimensions, as the video tries to portrait.

Re: Mathematicians confirm the possibility of data transfer via gravitational waves

#40
post #20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you are joking, but transmit information through dimensions using gravity is one interesting conjecture why gravitational force is so much weaker than the other forces. It leaks through dimensions. And maybe this type of communication will be necessary when we have to leave this dimension to hyperspace because of the entropy [1]. [1] http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

The 3+1 dimensional spacetime is not embedded in a higher dimensional space [1]. If there are additional dimensions, they have to be "rolled up" and tiny. [1] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2018/07/...

I wish I could read a paper like this one! My takeaway is that is no leak, but this doesn't prove that there are not higher dimensions in space, just that the gravitational waves can't get through it (if exists).
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