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Astronomically OT :Gravity waves.

Forrest Addy

Forrest Addy

Diamond
Joined
Dec 20, 2000
Location
Bremerton WA USA
So-o-o: how's your astrophysics?

Regarding LIGO's latest gravity wave discoveries: it's generally believed by very competent scientists that the "Bweeep!" sound represented the final in-spiral of two black holes (each mass: greater than 4 x solar masses). They went from decaying orbits too a rapid in-spiral merging as a single mass.

OK. Now what?

How could the mass-enegy dynamic be described?

Was there a net increase in system energy?

How was the change of system energy manifested?

As greater heat content?

Greater mass than the sum of the initial bodies?

Greater vector velocity?

Greater rotation in reference to inertial space?

Was Einstein right?

Shouldn't be too tough to figure out. Lessee; where's my "Relativity for Dummies" book
 
The two merging bodies were ~30 and ~35 solar masses.

The system lost energy. It was radiated as gravitational radiation. Gravity waves are density waves in the upper atmosphere. Gravitational waves are the ones observed by LIGO.

According to the theories in vogue at the time of the event, a black hole - black hole merger should not have an electromagnetic signature, so no visible radiation.

The final mass was less than the mass of the two premerger bodies. The mass difference was equivalent to the energy radiated as gravitational waves.

Einstein was right.
 
Forrest Addy said:
So-o-o: how's your astrophysics?

Regarding LIGO's latest gravity wave discoveries: it's generally believed by very competent scientists that the "Bweeep!" sound represented the final in-spiral of two black holes (each mass: greater than 4 x solar masses). They went from decaying orbits too a rapid in-spiral merging as a single mass.

OK. Now what?

How could the mass-enegy dynamic be described?

Was there a net increase in system energy?

How was the change of system energy manifested?

As greater heat content?

Greater mass than the sum of the initial bodies?

Greater vector velocity?

Greater rotation in reference to inertial space?

Was Einstein right?

Shouldn't be too tough to figure out. Lessee; where's my "Relativity for Dummies" book
Click to expand...

In regards to your last question -- General Relativity is still in good standing following the LIGO results. As an aside, however, so is the Brans-Dicke theory of gravity.
 
I'm admittedly a person of limited intellect...but that doesn't mean I can't be incredibly uninterested in stuff that can't be seen or heard or felt and will never have any impact on my life. I mean....it is interesting, but far less so than a good hammer or a box of french fries.

Anyway....I took several college courses in Astronomy and one thing that stuck with me was the professor explaining that he was a Theoretical Astrophysicist. That was a polite and fancy way of saying that nothing his field of study dealt with was actually proven. It was all guesses and theories. If you stop and mull that over....you realize it's a pretty good racket to be in.
 
GregSY said:
I'm admittedly a person of limited intellect...but that doesn't mean I can't be incredibly uninterested in stuff that can't be seen or heard or felt and will never have any impact on my life. I mean....it is interesting, but far less so than a good hammer or a box of french fries.

Anyway....I took several college courses in Astronomy and one thing that stuck with me was the professor explaining that he was a Theoretical Astrophysicist. That was a polite and fancy way of saying that nothing his field of study dealt with was actually proven. It was all guesses and theories. If you stop and mull that over....you realize it's a pretty good racket to be in.
Click to expand...

You have a strange (and erroneous) concept of what theoretical astrophysics is.
 
GregSY said:
I'm admittedly a person of limited intellect...but that doesn't mean I can't be incredibly uninterested in stuff that can't be seen or heard or felt and will never have any impact on my life. I mean....it is interesting, but far less so than a good hammer or a box of french fries.

Anyway....I took several college courses in Astronomy and one thing that stuck with me was the professor explaining that he was a Theoretical Astrophysicist. That was a polite and fancy way of saying that nothing his field of study dealt with was actually proven. It was all guesses and theories. If you stop and mull that over....you realize it's a pretty good racket to be in.
Click to expand...

Declarative ignorance is not a virtue..

Today's ivory tower speculations have a way of becoming tomorrow's wonders. Solid-state physics was widely ridiculed in the '30's but it's given us modern day digital electronics. Same with steam, internal combustion, germ theory and public health, scientific method, mass production, genetics, etc.

Be honestly skeptical but if you don't understand something and can see no need to a line of inquiry, Sneer to yourself or time will make a fool of the beige rant ignorant.. .
 
Forrest Addy said:
Be honestly skeptical but if you don't understand something and can see no need to a line of inquiry, Sneer to yourself or time will make a fool of the beige rant ignorant.. .
Click to expand...

I march in step with you, but I can't help but notice that as a culture we seem to be happiest while ignorant, and will go to great lengths to keep ourselves so. There's a thousand times more web pages available about the Kardashians than on science updates, and a million times the page views.

Tiny boast - I did a little bit of very early work on LIGO parts when I was working in MIT's Center for Space Research, and Prof Weiss was still in Bldg 20 (back when there was a CSR and Bldg 20). For some info on the early days: Q&A: Rainer Weiss on LIGO’s origins | MIT News
 
Widely thought to be a shoe-in for the Nobel, instead, and perhaps more fittingly the LIGO discovery was awarded a "Breakthrough Prize".
(Aout $3M).This is funded by a Russian scientiest/oligarch billionaire and a variety of other billionaires. Notably the three driving principals while getting the majority of the money, all 1000+ researchers associated with LIGO also received about $1000 each.
 
It would not be hard, at all, to make the argument that such a view - that 'ignorance' is the refuge of fools like me - is far less palpable than the flip side....those who engage in too much theory and intellect are self-aggrandizing and 'mental masturbators'.

It's kinda like how most people want to throw up when someone starts in on how drinking a $900 bottle of wine from 1974 is well worth the price even if you just consider the bouquet. A little horseshit in life is OK, but when you start to wallow in it too long....

So the question is this: Do you really find that shit interesting, or are you just tossing it around to try to look smart? Note that I'm letting you completely off the hook on the issue of 'useful'.
 
GregSY said:
So the question is this: Do you really find that shit interesting, or are you just tossing it around to try to look smart? Note that I'm letting you completely off the hook on the issue of 'useful'.
Click to expand...

This is an issue where if you understand why people study it, no explanation is required and if you do not, no amount of explaining will make you understand it.

When you ask why someone should have an education, the usual answers will be increasing earning power, etc. To me, the primary use of education is for my own benefit. When you pass a cut in limestone for a highway, do you see a rock or millions of years of sea creatures living, striving, and dying, contributing their bits of calcium carbonate to the sea bottom. The only thing you really need to worry about is whether the rock will collapse on you, so keep worrying about earthquakes and leave the pointless speculation to others.

Richard Feynman did a video clip where he held a flower and described the petal structure, veins, and on down to the atomic level. He ended by saying that knowing all that did not diminish his appreciation of the beauty of the flower.

Re Einstein, I regard him as as much mystic as scientist, one who guessed at the structure of the universe and got lucky.

Bill
 
"...guessed at the structure of the universe and got lucky. "

To you or me it, from 20 feet away, it just *looks* like a guess. To him, it was nothing more than
simple hard work. Like ditch digging, for us. =)
 
Forrest Addy said:
Declarative ignorance is not a virtue..

Today's ivory tower speculations have a way of becoming tomorrow's wonders. Solid-state physics was widely ridiculed in the '30's but it's given us modern day digital electronics. Same with steam, internal combustion, germ theory and public health, scientific method, mass production, genetics, etc.

Be honestly skeptical but if you don't understand something and can see no need to a line of inquiry, Sneer to yourself or time will make a fool of the beige rant ignorant.. .
Click to expand...

Add radio and its various offspring. Marconi could not interest anyone in Italy because he had only gotten its range up to a mile or so. Fortunately some Englishmen were a little more farsighted. Lee deForest was charged with fraud for saying that someday radio would communicate around the world.

Some years ago a fellow was ranting about the money wasted on space development. I pointed out how the TV news now switched from Washington DC to Berlin, to Moscow, and so on in seconds. We were getting weather forecasts a week out instead of guessing about the next day because of weather satellites and computers.

I'm old enough to remember Edward R. Murrow reporting from London, fading in and out despite triple diversity receivers and huge Vee beams at Riverhead. Now you can't tell the difference between a reporter in your city and one in Capetown.

Anyway, the aforesaid clown's response was that they should keep making the useful satellites but quit wasting money on the other junk.

Bill
 
Forrest Addy said:
Declarative ignorance is not a virtue..

Today's ivory tower speculations have a way of becoming tomorrow's wonders. Solid-state physics was widely ridiculed in the '30's but it's given us modern day digital electronics. Same with steam, internal combustion, germ theory and public health, scientific method, mass production, genetics, etc.

Be honestly skeptical but if you don't understand something and can see no need to a line of inquiry, Sneer to yourself or time will make a fool of the beige rant ignorant.. .
Click to expand...

Well stated.
 
9100 said:
Re Einstein, I regard him as as much mystic as scientist, one who guessed at the structure of the universe and got lucky.
Click to expand...

I guess it was a slow day at the patent office when he came up with that one. I heard it took him longer to decide on the name "General Relativity" than it did for him to work out the actual theory.

And don't get me started on that E=mc2 stuff. How lucky was that? I heard he was seriously considering E=mc3, but his barber convinced him to go with the former.

Finally, there was the theory of the photoelectric effect. I guess the Nobel committee decided they should just give this guy a prize since, if anything, he was the luckiest theoretical physicist they had ever encountered.
 
Exploration and knowledge are a good thing. Sometimes the "new hottest thing" withers away but sometimes it develops into something worthwhile. I don't know the ratio but I suspect the majority of research projects either never make it out of the lab or spend years waiting for some other technology breakthrough that allows them to advance. Without the failures we would not have the successes and even the failures can get resurrected sometimes as new ideas or developments can get them past the stumbling blocks that held them back.

Many times decades old work can get a new life when it has potential uses that weren't needed back when the original work was done. The current crop of molten salt reactor projects are based on work that was stopped decades ago. The current desire to move away from electricity generated by burning fuel has given the idea new life.
 
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