Am I right that this is basically this is a super high tech Michelson–Morley experiment, to detect waves instead of aether?
That's exactly what it is.
What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
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Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#32I hope Forbes realizes that blocking access to users with add blockers is not only a way to get rid of freeloaders, but also a way to ensure those people avoid Forbes altogether in the future and also avoid passing around Forbes links, since not everybody can see them. Alienating your audience is a very expensive mistake and the cost savings related to page serving are negligible. While I can turn off my add blocker,…
They do not detect uBlock Origins.
With the 3rd-party filter "Anti-Adblock Killer | Reek" enabled.
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#33I hope Forbes realizes that blocking access to users with add blockers is not only a way to get rid of freeloaders, but also a way to ensure those people avoid Forbes altogether in the future and also avoid passing around Forbes links, since not everybody can see them. Alienating your audience is a very expensive mistake and the cost savings related to page serving are negligible. While I can turn off my add blocker,…
Not the same article, but I suspect this one inspired the Forbes one, and it seems to provide more details:
http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-5-cosmic-ques...
> a way to ensure those people avoid Forbes altogether in the future
I have an ad blocker and never ended up doing this. I either forget which websites are "blocking ad blockers", or I just click without checking the source, especially if the link is in the home of a site I trust like HN.
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
An announcement of an announcement is always off-topic here, so we changed the URL from http://www.ligo.org/news/media-advisory.php to that article, which is much more substantive. Thanks! The announcement itself, of course, will be on topic when it happens, but we can be patient.
FWIW, there's also https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/09/watch-this-s... , with no adblock issues.
Ok, we changed to that from http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/02/09/what-....
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Black holes (...) take infinite time to form This is wrong, and based on not taking into account that in GR, simultaneity is not only a relative thing, but also a local thing. There is much more detail in several great answers to this Stack Exchange question: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/5031/can-black-ho...
Did you actually read the answers you linked to? They say exactly the same thing: A distant observer never sees a blackhole form, but infalling matter does. Because GR has no such concept of simultaneity the two observers can never agree on when the black hole formed. But since we are here on Earth we care about how it looks to a distant observer, and from our point of view black holes never form. And what the infall…
In the original comment I replied to, the point was "black holes cannot form because we cannot observe it, so black holes don't exist". This is a misunderstanding, and is what I was pointing out.
Saying that something objectively "doesn't happen" because an observer infinitely far away can't see it is ridiculous.
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#36I'm curious as to why ligo is the only project ever mentioned, particularly given that they have to work with virgo and geo600 to be able to triangulate their observations - a two axis interferometer only gives you partial information. Better PR team?
If you look carefully at the press release, the group that's presenting on Thursday is the LSC, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which includes VIRGO and GEO. It's one big group, as everyone in the field shares hardware techniques and analysis techniques.
Yes, I know that, but the press only mention ligo. I'd assume because it's the only American one.
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#37I'm curious as to why ligo is the only project ever mentioned, particularly given that they have to work with virgo and geo600 to be able to triangulate their observations - a two axis interferometer only gives you partial information. Better PR team?
The new Virgo detector is not operational yet.
GEO600 is operational, but it is much less sensitive that the Ligo detectors.
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you actually read the answers you linked to? They say exactly the same thing: A distant observer never sees a blackhole form, but infalling matter does. Because GR has no such concept of simultaneity the two observers can never agree on when the black hole formed. But since we are here on Earth we care about how it looks to a distant observer, and from our point of view black holes never form. And what the infall…
In the original comment I replied to, the point was "black holes cannot form because we cannot observe it, so black holes don't exist". This is a misunderstanding, and is what I was pointing out. Saying that something objectively "doesn't happen" because an observer infinitely far away can't see it is ridiculous.
> This is a misunderstanding, and is what I was pointing out.
No. You are misunderstanding things.
> because an observer infinitely far away can't see it
No, it's not that the observer can't see it (too hard to see or something like that). It never occurs in the timeline of the observer.
From the point of view of the observer it never actually exists. That it exists from the point of view of someone else is irrelevant. It's not a semantic game about I can see it you can't.
It literally and actually simply does not exist.
(Not to mention the context is gravity waves, so if it never exists from the point of view of the observer it also can't make gravity waves.)
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#39I hope Forbes realizes that blocking access to users with add blockers is not only a way to get rid of freeloaders, but also a way to ensure those people avoid Forbes altogether in the future and also avoid passing around Forbes links, since not everybody can see them. Alienating your audience is a very expensive mistake and the cost savings related to page serving are negligible. While I can turn off my add blocker,…
>I hope Forbes realizes that blocking access to users with add blockers is not only a way to get rid of freeloaders
What if they also start blocking access to users with subtract blockers, or even multiply or divide blockers?
Re: What Will It Mean If LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the original comment I replied to, the point was "black holes cannot form because we cannot observe it, so black holes don't exist". This is a misunderstanding, and is what I was pointing out. Saying that something objectively "doesn't happen" because an observer infinitely far away can't see it is ridiculous.
> This is a misunderstanding, and is what I was pointing out. No. You are misunderstanding things. > because an observer infinitely far away can't see it No, it's not that the observer can't see it (too hard to see or something like that). It never occurs in the timeline of the observer. From the point of view of the observer it never actually exists. That it exists from the point of view of someone else is irrelevan…
Pardon me if I am being obtuse, but the point of the original comment was "black holes do not exist in our universe, since time dilation at the event horizon is infinite", yes? This is what I am arguing against.
The event horizon is within the future null infinity of your observer; i.e. the observer may choose to travel towards to black hole, and will asymptotically fall into it and thus undeniably observe it. Hence it does actually exist even for this observer. Moreover, the observer can observe the shadow, effect on nearby masses and the gravitational lensing produced by the black hole, thus indirectly observing the black hole, even though he cannot see the actual event horizon.