What I find most amazing about all this is the fact that Einstein suggested this 100 years ago and we wouldn’t even have been looking for them otherwise.

His brain was probably bigger than the combined brains of all of us on this forum…

If people didn’t study physics, you wouldn’t be looking at a computer screen now.

Conversely, if people didn’t study physics, we wouldn’t have nuclear weapons.
PS, fan and visiting the large hadron collider later this year, jut playing a bit of devil’s advocate.

And as for that Gallileo, in one of his last publications, he not only demonstrated that the universe doesn’t revolve round the earth, he explained why tides work and created early tide tables based on his astronomical observations. In a world driven by marine trade, that was a relatively useful thing. In return for which, those who didn’t understand the work he did had him charged with heresy, found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, even though there was no sustainable argument to back up the Aristotlean philosophy supported by the church. The sentence was commuted t lifetime house arrest. maybe that’s the world ton wants us living in.

Ohh and my brother/sister-in-law both work in astro-physics over in California (they were leading the team doing the ‘Space Shade’ for Northrop Grummon that was recently in the headlines – although granted nowhere near as big a thing as this) that helps astronomers look at relatively dim stars by blotting out the glare from nearby brighter stars. So, by default, I am very fascinated by all of this stuff and how people can begin to understand the vastness and complexity of its very existence.

errmm I think most of the truly great scientific breakthroughs were well before 1957.

As you sit here at your computer on the internet.. again.. 🙄

Some of you lot take so much for granted…

I’m loving the gravitational waves stuff..
Biggest discovery of our lifetime..

It seems likely that ‘bad vibes’ being on someone’s wavelength and medical stuff like Reiki, sound therapy and other stuff dismissed as ‘woo’ will become scientific fact..

In your face spirituality doubters!! 🙂

Well I love this sort of stuff too, and along with the Higgs Boson it is amongst the biggest breakthroughs ever. Without this I tend to think that what is the point of human beings and life in general if not to seeks a better understanding of the universe around us – or else we may as well press that nuclear button and take the shortcut to armageddon because that’s where we’re heading ultimately and without a purpose it makes it all pointless. The Earth is warming – so what – there will be no Earth in a couple of million years, maybe less. At least better understanding might lead to a way that human beings can live on earth without screwing it up.

For my basic understanding one of the things this does is to disprove Newtons view of gravity which is that it is an attractive force between objects. We now know it isn’t. The true meaning of gravity is now a distortion of the fabric of space-time relative to the mass of an object – so a bit like stretching out a sheet, putting a bowling ball in the middle of it so it sags, then rolling marbles along the sheet so they ultimately roll towards the bowling ball – so not a force between the marble and bowling ball, but a distortion causing the two objects to be drawn to each other. So if you imagine our sun is the bowling ball, the planets marbles then that is how gravity is acting and causing planets to orbit the sun – the planets are moving at speed to maintain a constant orbit.

So when you get a cataclysmic event between two super-massive objects, like two black holes colliding – it is such a violent collision that it sends a ripple through the fabric of space time, like ripples in a pond when you throw a stone in, and it is those ripples we’ve detected.

As for the potential applications of this – well how does Warp drive grab you? Apart from that it is just another significant stepping stone confirming one small element of our understanding of a much larger universe. Another step in the journey. Also it means we now have yet another method to observing the universe – we have telescopes observing light, radio telescopes observing electromagnetic waves across the electromagnetic spectrum, and now the opportunity to develop telescopes that observe gravity.

oh, and dont even get me started on Higgs Boson and his collider thing……… 🙄

but I do like good vfm…which I do not think space stuff is

why does it have to be VFM? Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a good thing.

“and now the opportunity to develop telescopes that observe gravity.”

Its actually more akin to listening and is going to get more sensitive as the tech gets better

“Light has some real limitations as a method of exploration. It’s easy to block, can be warped or lensed by large masses, and has a limited spectrum on which to operate. Gravity, on the other hand, passes though the universe unobstructed and contains a wealth of data.

Plans are now afoot for a third LIGO detector to be built in India, to extract yet more information from newly detected gravitational waves; more – and better – designs will come along as engineering progresses.

“This discovery is akin to Galileo first looking through his telescope and seeing the moons of Jupiter,” said Sean McWilliams, assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and a LIGO team member.

“We are ‘hearing’ the Universe now for the first time, and given how much we have learned by seeing the Universe since Galileo’s time, it’s a genuine thrill to imagine how much we will now be able to learn by listening to gravitational waves.”[b]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/11/gravitational_wave_detected/?page=2

A video for your edification:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTY1Kje0yLg[/video]

And we still do NOT have any real benefit realisation to finding Gravity Waves, except a lot of people saying “it’s a good thing”

So.. No benefit then, except people feel good for finding out Gravity Waves exist.

WoW, like..

Wow..

How dull.

And I’m not trolling.

If anyone has concrete benefit realisation they feel will be the outcome of spending all this money on this “thing” then please.. offer us up your insight.

Because theres a Zika virus out there just waiting to be cured.

Because theres a Zika virus out there just waiting to be cured.

And you reckon Physicists are the right people for the job ?

Zika virus..

Yeah cos what this planet needs is even more humans

Because theres a Zika virus out there just waiting to be cured.

So you’d shut down Physics altogether until all diseases are cured?

sos’eh kup-sarlah riyeht(-) k’ t’nash-veh nahp

Because theres a Zika virus out there just waiting to be cured.

you know, it is possible to do more than one thing at a time, right?

So.. No benefit then, except people feel good for finding out Gravity Waves exist.

WoW, like..

Wow..

How dull.

Do you not think that understanding the mechanics of the universe is a benefit in itself or will you only be happy once Panasonic bring out a gravity wave cooker?

You’re right bikebouy. There are absolutely no benefits to knowledge and understanding. Ignorance rocks!! We should have stayed in our caves and not ventured out. Look what our curiosity has unleashed!

I have a couple of reasons, but none of them have a monetary value so you will probably just write them off

1) Most humans have an intrinsic need to explain why things happen (a result of pattern recognition tendencies I think), this is just explaining one more thing for those whose intellect is capable of asking the question
2) For years the answers were supplied by religions, who had a great benefit that they didn’t require anything as pesky as evidence. However there were a couple of issue with this approach, firstly it didn’t lead to any progress and secondly it gave them a a lot of power they could abuse
3) Science is all about disproving ideas and models. If we didn’t go out and prove that gravity waves either did or didn’t exist then we would essentially have another religion! One where we just have to believe that gravity waves exist because Einstein said so, we have found that this is really not a great way to make progress!
4) Looking for the financial gain from this is a short term capitalist viewpoint. Much better is to work on the idea that as a species we have all taken another proven step to understanding how the universe works.

What I want to know if how are they so sure the chirp they saw was two black holes colliding 750 million light years years ago? I get that they detected a gravity wave, but they seem very sure exactly where / what it came from, which given the size of the Universe, seems implausible to me.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq4uCWtQE24[/video]

The last line….

agree totally….but most of out knowledge came from bloke like Einstein/Galileo/Edison/Fleming/other great inventors…..who did not watch star wars and star trek.

Tell me who first postulated the idea of geosynchronous satellites before the Nazis started lobbing V2 ballistic missiles at London then.
I’ll give you a clue, he was a British science-fiction writer. A surprising number of people who write the sort of stuff you’re sneering at are actual scientists; astronomers, physicists, astrophysicists.
If certain people want to save some money to cure the Zika virus, (and there WILL be a cure, be sure of it, it was on the BBC news this morning), then stop humans from fighting one another and spending trillions of dollars on weapons.
Or how about the approximately twelve billion pounds squandered on an IT system for the NHS that never worked and was scrapped after years of its miserable, misbegotten existence*.
It’s astounding to me that some people can display such clear hostility to the acquisition of knowledge for the sake of learning about how the world and the universe around us works; this seems to be almost the definition of a troll, sitting in the dark and damp, scratching it’s ass, and picking its nose and lice out of its hair.
It’s the drive to learn and discover that’s the essence of being human; otherwise just go and join a troup of bonobos.
*That money would have paid the salaries of 60,000 nurses for a decade, and the total cost may have been far higher.

OK, after reading all this I have come to the conclusion that Einstein invented Strava.

MINTBALL !!!

fistly I don’t understand it. also, what is the point?

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/no-youre-not-entitled-your-opinion

It’s not just space and the universe and boring nerdy stuff though is it?

Every moving mass in the universe emits gravity waves.. So that also includes small stuff, like people and oceans and atomic particles

It could get very interesting

The very fact that we are being told about it in a way which leads us to think of it in astronomical terms leads me to suspect the really interesting discoveries will be on a much smaller scale

Or how about the approximately twelve billion pounds squandered on an IT system for the NHS that never worked and was scrapped after years of its miserable, misbegotten existence*.

To be fair, that was intended to do good, it was just **** up by incompetent planning and implementation.

It’s very hard to justify the search for gravity waves in terms of the benefits it will deliver. Who knows what will come from it in 10 years, or 100 years.
If you stop doing science like this, with no immediate benefit, where do you stop? Who decides what’s worth doing and what isn’t? As has been said above, it’s pretty cheap anyway, so keep doing it.

Ton.

An example of hypothesis which was later proven yet had no real benefit at the time BUT which is close to your heart (pun intended).

In 1842 Christian Doppler proposed that the frequency of a wave could be altered by the movement of the emitter or receiver (that’s my school boy physics).

It was proven a few years later and over the next 150 years practical applications have been developed, with, doubtless, many false starts and dead ends.

One of those being Doppler transesophageal echocardiography – something you may have had done when having your AF assessed and treated.

So a clear line from mathematical hypothesis through scientific exploration and onto practical uses.

This recent discovery may well yield nothing of value to the human race but it may be the most important discovery ever made – the future will tell.

And many people much cleverer than me already think it’s a very important discovery.

I teach physics for a living and have done for over 20 years. I still love it.

I have to say I’m a bit confused by the “What have we got form space exploration questions”. That’s obvious isn’t it GPS, satellite phone, satellite tv and weather forecasting.

But this isn’t really space research. This lab based physics detecting stuff from space

In my opinion the whole CERN Higgs thing was great. And I’m loving this gravitational waves thing even more.

But i don’t believe that either will ever change the world in terms of direct technology. But that doesn’t mean the money is wasted

Things are worth money if people like them. I don’t like football but understand billions is spent on it. Some people don’t like mountain biking but still money is spent building trail centres, that we can use for free. Enough people are interested in these advancements to make the expense worthwhile. Its value is the pleasure it brings

These big projects have huge spin offs. Lets not forget we have the world wide web due to CERN. When CERN go to a company and say can you make this amazing thing the company get really good at doing new stuff. When CERN spends a pound it generates another 4 because those companies go onto to sell new products with the skills they learnt from the CERN contract

Its mad to assume that less physics research would help the fight against cancer. They physics doesn’t take funds away from cancer research any more anything else like beer or movies. If we all stopped drinking beer we could use the money to cure cancer. But i like beer you cry. Well i like beer and physics

Scientific advances since 1957. Well we got MRI in the 1970s, rubbish isn’t it

It’s not just the direct spin offs that may or may not come form this ‘big’ science. It’s inspiring children to do science, who then go on to find a cure for cancer, or a new source of energy. How do you predict that, or put a value on it?

What I find a bit depressing about discussions like this is the implicit assumption that the most important thing in the world is money. Not love, not a sense of wonder, not knowledge, not trying to understand the universe, money.

Money’s not even real, and yet it seems to be the most important thing.

Imagine they’d not found what they were looking for. That would have meant that Einstein was wrong and would have left a large hole in our understanding of the universe. Working out what to fill that hole with might have led to all sorts of other discoveries too.

So do you lot really believe that technological stuff will be the answer to the problems of the human race?
I think it is more likely to come, if it does, from changes in human behaviour

I heard someone from CERN on the radio recently saying that many of the discoveries they make may not directly affect us day to day, but the equipment and instrumentation used is real cutting edge technology, that will have practical use in other areas down the line. I cant remember what some of the uses were. I think superconductors were mentioned at one point.

Imagine they’d not found what they were looking for. That would have meant that Einstein was wrong and would have left a large hole in our understanding of the universe.

They’re physicists, they’d have just changed the numbers until they got the answer they wanted. 😈

What I find a bit depressing about discussions like this is the implicit assumption that the most important thing in the world is money. Not love, not a sense of wonder, not knowledge, not trying to understand the universe, money.
Money’s not even real, and yet it seems to be the most important thing.

See the late great Douglas Adams:

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

lot really believe that technological stuff will be the answer to the problems of the human race?
I think it is more

They’ll provide some solutions to some problems of the human race. Likely a far more rewarding result than the cost of investment.

I heard someone from CERN on the radio recently saying that many of the discoveries they make may not directly affect us day to day, but the equipment and instrumentation used is real cutting edge technology, that will have practical use in other areas down the line. I cant remember what some of the uses were. I think superconductors were mentioned at one point.

As an example – capacitive touch screens were invented there ages ago and they seem quite popular nowadays.

ok ok i take back all i have said.
i have just watched Guardians of the Galaxy.
i am now a believer…… 😀

end of thread please mods.

To me it’s all a distraction from what is really going on and the changes we have the power to make i.e. in our own minds.