I call Poe's Law.

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Theory never leads to practical things!!!

Of course not:)
But seriously we humans would be back in the stone age if we didn't know how to utilize knowledge.

"This is tremendous news for everyone studying gravity and general relativity, and we send our warmest congratulations to colleagues in the LIGO collaboration for their outstanding result," says Paul McNamara, LISA Pathfinder project scientist at ESA.

LISA Pathfinder is ESA's technology demonstration mission for possible future missions to observe gravitational waves from space. Launched on 3 December 2015, the spacecraft reached its operational orbit in January and is undergoing final checks before starting its science mission on 1 March.

"With LISA Pathfinder, we will be testing the underlying technology to observe gravitational waves from space, and it is even more encouraging to know that these long-mysterious fluctuations have now been directly detected," adds Paul.

Maybe proof-of-concept for "get a LIGO-style detector into space".

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Theory never leads to practical things!!!

Of course not:)
But seriously we humans would be back in the stone age if we didn't know how to utilize knowledge.

Glad you understood, Janne. There are several examples of theoretical results that either immediately yielded practical results. Others could take 1-2 centuries. But it does happen.

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Capitalize on this good fortune, one word can bring you round ... changes.

I call Poe's Law.

Read some of the posts from the last few weeks to last few months to realize this characterization is not entirely accurate.

Back to topic?

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Capitalize on this good fortune, one word can bring you round ... changes.

LISA Pathfinder is ESA's technology demonstration mission for possible future missions to observe gravitational waves from space. Launched on 3 December 2015, the spacecraft reached its operational orbit in January and is undergoing final checks before starting its science mission on 1 March.

Jann that's the definition of a proof of concept test.

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LISA Pathfinder is ESA's technology demonstration mission for possible future missions to observe gravitational waves from space. Launched on 3 December 2015, the spacecraft reached its operational orbit in January and is undergoing final checks before starting its science mission on 1 March.

Jann that's the definition of a proof of concept test.

Please explain what the definition of a proof of concept test is.

LISA Pathfinder is ESA's technology demonstration mission for possible future missions to observe gravitational waves from space. Launched on 3 December 2015, the spacecraft reached its operational orbit in January and is undergoing final checks before starting its science mission on 1 March.

Jann that's the definition of a proof of concept test.

Please explain what the definition of a proof of concept test is.

When you run a test not to create a result but to prove if your methodology is viable. That is exactly what Lisa Pathfinder is supposed to do. That is why it is called "Pathfinder".

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"Theory determines what can be observed" Albert Einstein
Gravitational waves were predicted by him in 1916 and observed in 2016
Tullio

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"Theory determines what can be observed" Albert Einstein
Gravitational waves were predicted by him in 1916 and observed in 2016
Tullio

I think the Nobel comittee have some trouble here.
François Englert and Peter W. Higgs got a Nobel Prize for finding the Higgs boson about 50 years after they proposed the mechanism why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass.
Now gravitational waves 100 years after it was predicted by Einstein is now at last observed.
Who will get the Nobel prize? Einstein again?

Three scientists were the leaders of the LIGO project, Kip Thorne,Rainer Weiss and Ronald Drever. But Drever is ill and, according to the NY Times, is in a nursing home in Scotland. If he could not be eligible, I would propose Stephen Hawking, as an example of a scientist doing research notwithstanding disabilities.
Tulio

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"Theory determines what can be observed" Albert Einstein
Gravitational waves were predicted by him in 1916 and observed in 2016
Tullio

I think the Nobel comittee have some trouble here.
François Englert and Peter W. Higgs got a Nobel Prize for finding the Higgs boson about 50 years after they proposed the mechanism why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass.
Now gravitational waves 100 years after it was predicted by Einstein is now at last observed.
Who will get the Nobel prize? Einstein again?

It won't be Einstein, since posthumous awards are not permitted by the statutes of the Nobel Foundation.

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Well, according to Alfred Nobel's will there are very few eligable prize winners.

"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiology or medical works by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not."

The Nobel Foundation however have their own rules.

Whatever.
Marco Drago, a thirty-two-year-old Italian postdoctoral student and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, was the first person to notice them. He was sitting in front of his computer at the Albert Einstein Institute, in Hannover, Germany, viewing the LIGO data remotely. The waves appeared on his screen as a compressed squiggle, but the most exquisite ears in the universe, attuned to vibrations of less than a trillionth of an inch, would have heard what astronomers call a chirp—a faint whooping from low to high.

And Kip Thorne who in 1984 cofounded the LIGO Project (the largest project ever funded by the NSF)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kip_Thorne

Reading through the comments being available, I am being struck by the fact that most people are looking at this discovery in relation to either what could be measured in a lab, or possibly by means of theoretical physics or mathematics alone.

Are we perhaps forgetting where we are supposed to be observing this phenomenon directly?

Perhaps tullio could give a better answer here, but why not rather be looking for gravitational waves by means of studying elementary particles?

Does this fact not only come to show that there is a difference between those particles which are the reason for radiation and therefore is supposed to be more about energy than the speed they possibly are having?

According to some YouTube videos being watched yesterday, the speed of light may not be reached by a physical object, because such a thing needs the creation of levels of energy which are not possible.

If an elementary particle is supposed to be having any mass, is it possible for such a particle to reach the speed of light, or will its actual speed end up becoming slightly smaller?

In the same way, if a particle is having mass, does it possess any energy which is not due to its speed alone, but more because it should be regarded as representing energy alone or on its own?

If gravitational waves have in fact been detected, they are as a result of the presence of mass and not only energy.

Still we are also discussing this subject in the context of General Relativity and not Special Relativity, because space and time is still not the same as matter and energy.

Because of that, the Special and General Theory of Relativity is still not about the precisely same thing.

The LIGO results have demonstrated that Einstein's field equations are valid to a distance of more than a billion light years. At the Washington Conference they showed the result of a computer simulation using these equations. The plot of the merging of two black holes was almost identical to the one observed by LIGO. This in my humble opinion is the most important result.
The merging of General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory is the greatest open problem in today's physics. Many people are working on this issue, using strings theory or quantum loop gravity, to mention just two approaches. Maybe a new generation of physicists, according to the idea of Thomas Kuhn, expressed in his book "The structure of scientific revolutions" will succeed in this task.
Tullio

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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?

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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.

but why not rather be looking for gravitational waves by means of studying elementary particles?

Does this fact not only come to show that there is a difference between those particles which are the reason for radiation and therefore is supposed to be more about energy than the speed they possibly are having?

According to some YouTube videos being watched yesterday, the speed of light may not be reached by a physical object, because such a thing needs the creation of levels of energy which are not possible.

If an elementary particle is supposed to be having any mass, is it possible for such a particle to reach the speed of light, or will its actual speed end up becoming slightly smaller?

If gravitational waves have in fact been detected, they are as a result of the presence of mass and not only energy.

'As Far As I Know':
While elementary particles can produce gravity waves, they (the waves) would be too small to detect with current equipment, largely because the particles themselves have such a low mass. Waves from holes are easier to detect because of the greater mass(es) involved, and the detecters still need to be large to amplify the signal...

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The word "struck" being used is not a very good one.

I rather should have said "I notice the fact that most people are looking at this discovery"...

Still it is an important one when it comes to one such and shows that when it comes to the properties of stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies, they are being part of a three-dimensional world which could also be explained by means of the notion of time.

When we are speaking about time, it most often is in relation with space, which is assumed to be three-dimensional and having elementary particles as its foundation for its existence.

Next we probably could relate or view the properties of the individual particles into a larger context which possibly could be part of a given or certain theory.

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

If I am not wrong, the Standard Model is a theory which should be relating to our current knowledge about three of the nuclear interactions in nature.

Being slightly confused right now, I notice that the article being related to General Theory of Relativity is not discussing the same subject or properties of objects as what is being found in the Standard Model.

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

Could someone elaborate or give a possible explanation for why this is being so.

Once again, I better should return back to Special Theory at a later time, because there probably is still no mood here when it comes to this subject.

See you tomorrow.

they are being part of a three-dimensional world which could also be explained by means of the notion of time.

I would state that as 'they are being part of a three-dimensional perception of a world, with an additional dimension being time. There have been postulated as many as 11 dimensions to explain some observed or theorized behaviors at various points in the Big "Inflation".

I think this observation says the local physical laws are the same 1 Billion light years away, but cannot prove that holds true completely back to T=0.

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"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

Nuclear interactions are two, the strong and the weak. This latter is joined to the electromagnetic interaction in the electroweak theory. The fourth interaction, gravity, is not bound to any other force. It is too weak at he level of elementary particles but manages the astronomical bodies, from planets, satellites, asteroids to stars an galaxies. It also manages dark matter, as can be seen on the deflections of light from distant galaxies (the Einstein lens effect). This is all we know at our time. Maybe the Standard Model can be modified in a way to include gravity. This is a task for future generations.
Tullio

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