Good answer, tullio.

...what benefit to humanity will this discovery bring?

Good question. We now know that these waves exists and we have also been affected of them but I haven't noticed them passing thru.
The benefit however lies in that the General Theory of Relativity needs to be tested since it's still a theory, not a law.

Maybe the Standard Model can be modified in a way to include gravity.

To me the Standard Model looks very much like the periodic system of elements.
Still some missing parts.
There are four forces in nature but only three force carriers.
Where are those "gravitons"?

Maybe the Standard Model can be modified in a way to include gravity.

To me the Standard Model looks very much like the periodic system of elements.
Still some missing parts.
There are four forces in nature but only three force carriers.
Where are those "gravitons"?

Hiding. And we know they are hiding and will for the foreseeable future. But we have found some interesting facts about them anyway. We know they must be very light, and we suspect they have no mass. We know they must spin 2. We know they move at c. We know they aren't attenuated by interstellar medium. What we don't know is if they exist.

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In Quantum Mechanics there is a wave/particle duality. Photons travel as waves but interact with matter as particles. Conversely, particles have a wave behavior, as has been demonstrated for atoms and molecules, even heavy molecules.So, if gravitational waves exist, so must gravitons, provided that GR follows the same laws. There is the rub.
Tullio

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So just how will this discovery improve our chances of travelling in interstellar space? Or, if that is not in the cards, what benefit to humanity will this discovery bring?

I have to agree with Bob.

Are you joking?
There are plenty of basic science researches that have led to spinoff effects.
For instance Paul Dirac's finding that matter also exist as antimatter. Positrons are used very much in medicin to cure cancer!

And to what benefit to humanity will the SETI project search for ET bring?

I had always hoped that the discovery of gravitational waves would lead to a way to locally cancel out it's affect, ie. antigravity. But as I understand it now there is no possibility of the existence of antigravity.

So just how will this discovery improve our chances of travelling in interstellar space? Or, if that is not in the cards, what benefit to humanity will this discovery bring?

This discovery might be interesting but for practical purposes its no use what so ever for the typical person in the street. All it means is some scientists will blow sunshine out of their holes for a few months and possibly make some money from giving lectures about it that's all.

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Life is what you make of it :-)

When i'm good i'm very good , but when i'm bad i'm shi#eloads better ;-) In't I " buttercups " p.m.s.l at authoritie !!;-)

People make a lot of money building and selling weapons. A F35 strikefighter costs 150 million dollars. Its pilot helmet costs 400000 dollars. Better spend that money on telescopes, interferometers and particle accelerators. In Jordan Arab, Iranian, Turkish and Israeli scientists are building the SESAME Synchrotron light source. This is money well spent.
Tullio

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People make a lot of money building and selling weapons. A F35 strikefighter costs 150 million dollars. Its pilot helmet costs 400000 dollars. Better spend that money on telescopes, interferometers and particle accelerators. In Jordan Arab, Iranian, Turkish and Israeli scientists are building the SESAME Synchrotron light source. This is money well spent.
Tullio

Indeed Tullio.
Without scientists we would be living like cavemen.
Yes, costly sometimes but the reward is so much bigger.

"Fatti non fosti a viver come bruti ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza". This is part of Ulysses' speech to his companions. Dante, Inferno.
Tullio

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"Fatti non fosti a viver come bruti ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza". This is part of Ulysses' speech to his companions. Dante, Inferno.
Tullio

Yes. Even back then we knew how to treasure knowledge.
Actually we have treasured knowledge many centuries before that.

The other shoe has dropped.

After a century of speculation and a half-century of searching, science teams using instruments built by Caltech and MIT have made a discovery that will take up permanent residency in physics textbooks from now to the end of textbooks. They've found the gravity waves that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted must pervade the cosmos.
Seth Shostak

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So just how will this discovery improve our chances of travelling in interstellar space? Or, if that is not in the cards, what benefit to humanity will this discovery bring?

I have to agree with Bob.

Are you joking?
There are plenty of basic science researches that have led to spinoff effects.
For instance Paul Dirac's finding that matter also exist as antimatter. Positrons are used very much in medicin to cure cancer!

And to what benefit to humanity will the SETI project search for ET bring?

But I doubt that this discovery will have any spinoffs that lead to the betterment of the everyday human situation. That is OK though as I do believe in science for science's sake. I just hope it doesn't lead to better and badder weaponry.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Contrarily to nuclear physics, which has produced nuclear weapons (the process was started by a letter written to Roosevelt signed by Einstein, but really written by Leo Szilard, which later Einstein regretted), general relativity has not produced any weapon, only GPS which uses it daily.
Tullio

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But I doubt that this discovery will have any spinoffs that lead to the betterment of the everyday human situation. That is OK though as I do believe in science for science's sake. I just hope it doesn't lead to better and badder weaponry.

Finding gravitational waves are probably not to give any spinoff effects.
I can agree with that.
But on the other hand Newtons explanation of gravity back in the 17th century took a very long time to have some impact to us humans.

That the military find new science useful to make weapons is well known...
Even Alfred Nobel was a supplier to armies in the world.

Anyway janneseti.

Gravity was being discovered because Isaac Newton was sitting in front of a tree and an apple fell on his head.

Not more difficult than that.

Is the presence of gravity and its possible implications for the innerworkings of nature supposed to give a better explanation for certain problems than other possible answers or explanations that could be given?

For now the only option or alternative to the scientific method in order to try solving the mysteries of nature are either by means of the study of pseudosciences or alternative sciences, which are not always being viewed or regarded as being too relevant.

One such example is hypnosis and hypnotic regression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnosis

For a lack of an even better explanation, we possibly could be back to the subject of religion and faith, but most likely those mormons did not believe in any spirits or angels either.

Most likely they were not any more familiar with the scientific method either.

http://www.csmonitor.com/

Edit: Came up with the idea visiting this web-page.

Probably some 20 years ago since I first came across this term, so here only a coincidence.

See you tomorrow.

LOL.
I discover gravity every morning when going up for work:)
Not more difficult than that.

Anyway janneseti.

Gravity was being discovered because Isaac Newton was sitting in front of a tree and an apple fell on his head.

Not more difficult than that.

Not sure if you knew this, but the Apple Incident is a myth.

I already knew about that.

More likely just sitting in front of that tree was part of his thinking process or deductive capability when it comes to a thinking mind.

The article has apparently been updated quite recently and is a very good one.

What an eminent scientist he came to be.

I know you are going for the scheduled maintenance, so I rather come back later for some more thoughts.

Edit: Wienerschnitzel for dinner here and also adding broccoli.

Very tasteful.

I just received the latest issue of "Nature Physics". There are several open articles about the detection of GW. There was an Italian postgraduate student, Marco Drago, working in Hannover who first saw the graphs and alerted his boss, Bruce Allen,the head of Einstein@home, then all LIGO scientists, about a thousand of them via email. The first reaction of Bruce Allen was that it was a false alarm due to an injection of data, as planned just to test the sensitivity of the apparatus. But no injection was planned, it was real.
Tullio

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