Have Scientists Found The Ellusive Gravitational Waves?

[Aethelwulf]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19408363

[tetrahedron]

Somehow I don't think people will find gravity waves, not with methods now in use. First, if my own crazy model is correct gravitons will propagate at Ludicrous Speed, to use a term from the movie Spaceballs. And also in all directions of spacetime simultaneously, including into the past. Thus most of the energy will be out of sight, out of mind. Yesterday's gravitational wave will get beyond our current visible universe. And waves from outside will be passing through it, making it impossible to trace to their origins.

 

Jess Tauber

[email protected]

[CraigD]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19408363

If the title “Have Scientists Found The Elusive Gravitational Waves?”, means “confirmed that gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light, causing changes in distance between stationary bodies as predicted by General Relativity” – the sort of thing LIGO, VIRGO, and eLISA/NGO are designed to detect – then, for the observations reported in J. J. Hermes et al’s paper, the subject of the BBC News article, the answer is no. These observations are, as the article notes, just a redoing of the 1979 observations of the neutron star binary that not only got object named after them, but won Hulse and Taylor the 1993 Physics Nobel, but using visible rather than radio band EM radiation. It appears to be some nice astronomy, but just more indirect evidence of GWs and support of GR. As techniques continue to improve, I expect there will be so many more such observations both in radio and visible light astronomy.

 

A positive “direct” result from a ground based length measurer like LIGO or VIRGO, or a space based one like the planned eLISA/NGO would be big “breakthrough” news, but so far all the ground based ones have produced are negative results. A space based one should be way more sensitive, and thus not require such a long wait for a big, infrequent event for up-or-down confirmation of GWs, but funding for them remains uncertain.

 

Somehow I don't think people will find gravity waves, not with methods now in use. First, if my own crazy model is correct gravitons will propagate at Ludicrous Speed, to use a term from the movie Spaceballs. And also in all directions of spacetime simultaneously, including into the past.

Being a fan of CTCs (as much as one can be a fan of things that haven’t be show to actually exist) I’m intrigued by your crazy model, Jess. Apologies for not searching myself, but do you have any posts here at hypography, or other linkable stuff, about it?

 

Thus most of the energy will be out of sight, out of mind. Yesterday's gravitational wave will get beyond our current visible universe. And waves from outside will be passing through it, making it impossible to trace to their origins.

Though being able to correlate a length change event with some astronomical object or event is critical to testing GR’s GW predictions, I’m pretty sure the LIGO/VIRGO folk would be delighted to detect any major event, even without EM astronomy to relate it to. If they could relate them to an EM event, showing a faster-than-light GW propagation speed, the delight would turn to near mania, and the physics world thrown into wonderful theoretical chaos.

 

GWs involve a much deeper theoretical prediction than that they travel at the speed of light, though. It’s about GR’s equivalence principle, distance (spatial metrics) being related to gravity – part of what Einstein, back in 1907, called “the happiest thought of my life”.

 

Discovering that gravity – or anything – propagates FTL would be the happiest thought of my life, as it would open the door for CTCs to be possible, and either utterly change our concept of causality, or poke a hole in Special Relativity even more mind-blowing. My happiness would be swiftly followed by chagrin at the sorry state of my physics education.