Far out cosmology: LIGO finds waves? Yes!!! (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 15, 2016, 19:41 (3081 days ago) @ David Turell

Strassler comments: - http://cms.web.cern.ch/sites/cms.web.cern.ch/files/styles/large/public/field/image/Imag... - "LIGO got a Christmas (US) present: Dec 25th/26th 2015, two more black holes were detected coalescing 1.4 billion light years away — changing the length of LIGO's arms by 300 parts in a trillion trillion, even less than the first merger observed in September. The black holes had 14 solar masses and 8 solar masses, and merged into a black hole with 21 solar masses, emitting 1 solar mass of energy in gravitational waves. In contrast to the September event, which was short and showed just a few orbits before the merger, in this event nearly 30 orbits over a full second are observed, making more information available to scientists about the black holes, the merger, and general relativity. (Apparently one of the incoming black holes was spinning with at least 20% of the maximum possible rotation rate for a black hole.) - "The signal is not so “bright” as the first one, so it cannot be seen by eye if you just look at the data; to find it, some clever mathematical techniques are needed. But the signal, after signal processing, is very clear. (Signal-to-noise ratio is 13; it was 24 for the September detection.) For such a clear signal to occur due to random noise is 5 standard deviations — officially a detection. The corresponding “chirp” is nowhere near so obvious, but there is a faint trace. - *** - "Let's remember also that advanced-LIGO is still not running at full capacity. When LIGO starts its next run, six months long starting in September, the improvements over last year's run will probably give a 50% to 100% increase in the rate for observed mergers. In the longer run, the possibility of one merger per week is possible. - "Meanwhile, VIRGO in Italy will come on line soon too, early in 2017. Japan and India are getting into the game too over the coming years. More detectors will allow scientists to know where on the sky the merger took place, which then can allow normal telescopes to look for flashes of light (or other forms of electromagnetic radiation) that might occur simultaneously with the merger… as is expected for neutron star mergers but not widely expected for black hole mergers. The era of gravitational wave astronomy is underway." - Comment: Fantastic. Einstein right again.