A Quote by Rainer Weiss
Observing gravitational waves would yield an enormous amount of information about the phenomena of strong-field gravity. If we could detect black holes collide, that would be amazing.
Related Quotes
We know about black holes and neutron stars, but we hope there are other phenomena we can see because of the gravitational waves they emit.
The Planck satellite may detect the imprint of the gravitational waves predicted by inflation. This would be quantum gravity written across the sky.
Space is much stiffer than you imagine; it's stiffer than a gigantic piece of iron. That's why it's taken so damned long to detect gravitational waves: to deform space takes an enormous amount of energy, and there are only so many things that have enough.
Gravitational waves will bring us exquisitely accurate maps of black holes - maps of their space-time. Those maps will make it crystal clear whether or not what we're dealing with are black holes as described by general relativity.
Gravitational waves will bring us exquisitely accurate maps of black holes - maps of their space-time. Those maps will make it crystal clear whether or not what were dealing with are black holes as described by general relativity.
When the signal reached LIGO from a collision of two stellar black holes that occurred 1.3 billion years ago, the 1,000-scientist-strong LIGO Scientific Collaboration was able to both identify the candidate event within minutes and perform the detailed analysis that convincingly demonstrated that gravitational waves exist.
I would like to mention astrophysics; in this field, the strange properties of the pulsars and quasars, and perhaps also the gravitational waves, can be considered as a challenge.
Even if 'going retrograde' or 'moving into Aquarius' were real phenomena, something that planets actually do, what influence could they possibly have on human events? A planet is so far away that its gravitational pull on a new-born baby would be swamped by the gravitational pull of the doctor's paunch.
When gravitational waves reach the earth, the waves stretch and squeeze space. This is a tiny stretch and squeeze. Far too small to detect with ordinary human senses.
The students on my course were fascinated by the idea that gravitational waves might exist. I didn't know much about them at all, and for the life of me, I could not understand how a bar interacts with a gravitational wave.
I think it's true we look forward to enormous amounts of information, but I think we would be better off if we thought about the kinds of wisdom and thoughtfulness that we need in order to handle the amount of information ahead.
It's a spectacular signal. It's a signal many of us have wanted to observe since the time LIGO was proposed. It shows the dynamics of objects in the strongest gravitational fields imaginable, a domain where Newton's gravity doesn't work at all, and one needs the fully non-linear Einstein field equations to explain the phenomena.
Wormholes are a gravitational phenomena. Or imaginary gravitational phenomena, as the case may be.
For reasons probably related to the popular vision of Albert Einstein and, also, the threat posed by black holes in comic books and science fiction, our gravitational wave discoveries have had an amazing public impact.
Only black holes of very low mass would emit a significant amount of radiation.
It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field into a single structure. Only so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close.
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