131–140 of 221 posts
Does that mean that a gravity wave is a ripple in space or a travelling wave of pinched or stretched space?
Also, assuming all that. I think we have 2 ways of squishing space this way : mass and acceleration. Are there any others?
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Yes, that's basically right. The gravitational way has a direction (say, z) in which its propagating. Within the plane perpendicular to that direction (x-y), a circular ring of particles will at at one moment experience squeezing in one direction (x) and stretching the perpendicular direction (y). As the wave passes through and you move from the peak of the wave to the trough, the directions reverse, so the first dir…
> Just as a child can swing their legs at the resonant frequency of a swing to pump up their sinusoidal amplitude, a very weak gravitational wave can pump up a ring oscillator if it's oscillating at the ring's resonant frequency. So is it possible that a passing gravitational wave could initiate some natural process that otherwise might have not happened?
You mean something like tectonic event trigger or something physics specific?
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I recommend looking into LIGO and other similar experiments. They use laser interferometry to accurately measure the distance between two points, to an extreme degree. From LIGO's website: Gravitational waves cause space itself to stretch in one direction and simultaneously compress in a perpendicular direction. In LIGO, this causes one arm of the interferometer to get longer while the other gets shorter, then vice v…
>*Gravitational waves cause space itself to stretch* Please ELI5 specifically and empiracally what "Space Itself" actually is. Would it be possible to build a 'galactic clock & Compass' - a "clock" to the regular pulses of a pulsar and the galactic direction the pulsar is in relation to the terrestrial compass (magnetic) on earth...? What is the pulsar with the most reliable timings?
There’s another aspect to this: the expansion coefficient. One such model is that the coefficient depends only on time: as time passes, distances increase. To model this, draw the same line on the flat sheet of material, then expand it uniformly in all directions. The distance is still a straight line, but the line is longer after the expansion.
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> Just as a child can swing their legs at the resonant frequency of a swing to pump up their sinusoidal amplitude, a very weak gravitational wave can pump up a ring oscillator if it's oscillating at the ring's resonant frequency. So is it possible that a passing gravitational wave could initiate some natural process that otherwise might have not happened?
It can at least trigger hn front page submission, this we know. You mean something like tectonic event trigger or something physics specific?
I assume the gravity wave could push the reaction to initiate by warping a subatomic element (like an electron orbital) into an otherwise impossible configuration on a scale of picometers for a split second.
are g-waves causing the Galactic filaments?
No, they are not caused by the galactic filaments. We don't know exactly yet what all is causing gravitational wave background (GWB), but a theory is that it could be caused by supermassive black holes, or primordial black holes from the early universe, etc.
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It can at least trigger hn front page submission, this we know. You mean something like tectonic event trigger or something physics specific?
I was thinking more along the lines of a chemical or nuclear reaction (or some yet-to-be-conceptualized space-time reaction) at near an initiation point, but not quite there. I assume the gravity wave could push the reaction to initiate by warping a subatomic element (like an electron orbital) into an otherwise impossible configuration on a scale of picometers for a split second.
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To simplify, the same way that a surfer on the sea can use the movement of the sea itself (waves) to surf! An Alcubierre drive (they're theoretical) would basically constantly compress the time curve of spacetime in front of the craft, allowing the craft to "ride" this compression as it moves forward, which means that the local speed of light of the craft is faster than the speed of light of an external observer. Not…
Sorry, I don't get it. Imagine you are on a rubber ruler. You can move at most 1 mark per second on the ruler. This is true regardless of how much the ruler is stretched or compressed. So to move from mark 1 to mark 100 will always take the same time at top speed, regardless of any stretching/compression.
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I was thinking more along the lines of a chemical or nuclear reaction (or some yet-to-be-conceptualized space-time reaction) at near an initiation point, but not quite there. I assume the gravity wave could push the reaction to initiate by warping a subatomic element (like an electron orbital) into an otherwise impossible configuration on a scale of picometers for a split second.
These gravity waves aren't strong enough to pull us off Earth. Everything on Earth is already subjected to gravity, and it doesn't cause nuclear reactions. Gravity waves won't cause impossible configurations to become possible.
I was taught that all items fall at the same speed, due to the gravitational constant.
With these waves, does that mean that items will fall at ever so slightly differing speeds, as depending on the size of the wave there is a pull in the other direction, and the constant is slightly off?
And OT, but related: Since every item has a gravitational pull related to its mass, would a bigger item fall ever so slightly faster than a small one, as it is pulling itself to Earth in addition to Earth pulling it down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can at least trigger hn front page submission, this we know. You mean something like tectonic event trigger or something physics specific?
I was thinking more along the lines of a chemical or nuclear reaction (or some yet-to-be-conceptualized space-time reaction) at near an initiation point, but not quite there. I assume the gravity wave could push the reaction to initiate by warping a subatomic element (like an electron orbital) into an otherwise impossible configuration on a scale of picometers for a split second.