Possible icebergs spotted on Pluto By Sid PerkinsFeb. 5, 2016 , 1:30 PM A newly released image of Pluto reveals what appear to be massive hills of water ice embedded in frozen flows of nitrogen—icebergs, if you will, that apparently broke away from larger masses of ice in the rugged highlands nearby. The photo, released yesterday and seen at right above, is a 340-km-by-500-km close-up of Sputnik Planum, the western lobe of a bright heart-shaped feature straddling Pluto’s equator. (Because water ice is less dense than nitrogen ice, bergs of such material would waft along just as they would in Earth’s seawater, the researchers explain.) Individual chunks seen in the image range from 1 to several kilometers long, and chains of the bergs seem to mark the edges of nitrogen glaciers flowing from the icy highlands onto a broad plain. Once on that lowland, the bergs are carried along by the slow-flowing nitrogen ice, often ending up clumped together in large groups (such as the 60-km-long Challenger Colles, upper right, a feature whose name honors the seven astronauts who died onboard space shuttle Challenger in 1986). The image, obtained just 12 minutes before the New Horizons craft swooped past Pluto last 14 July, was taken from a range of about 16,000 kilometers.
Hundreds of galaxies found behind the Milky Way Emilee SpeckContact Reporter according to the University of Western Australia. Peeeking behind the veil of our home galaxy the Milky Way are hundreds and hundreds more galaxies, according to a study published in the Astronomical Journal this week. The newly discovered galaxies -- 250 million light years away from Earth – had been hidden from astronomers view, but using the a radio telescope in Parkes, Australia astronomers were able to see through the dust of the Milky Way to find the massive galaxy gathering. The discovery may help explain the mystery known as the Great Attractor, an unknown force pulling the Milky Way and other galaxies “toward a gravitational force equivalent to a million billion suns,” according to the University of Western Australia. Lead author of the study, Professor Lister Staveley-Smith, with the University of Western Australia's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, said scientists have been seeking answers to this mysterious force for more than 40 years. Along with the 883 galaxies found the research team found three galaxy concentrations and two clusters that could give astronomers clues about what the pull behind the Great Attractor is. “We know that in this region there are a few very large collections of galaxies we call clusters or superclusters, and our whole Milky Way is moving towards them at more than two million kilometers per hour,” said Staveley-Smith. Using the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope the international team was able to see through the “thickest foreground layer of dust and stars” in the Milky Way, said co-author Renée Kraan-Korteweg, with the University of Cape Town. “An average galaxy contains 100 billion stars, so finding hundreds of new galaxies hidden behind the Milky Way points to a lot of mass we didn't know about until now,” Kraan-Korteweg said. The massive galaxy presence could explain where the draw is coming from, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The unknown of the Great Attractor is far from solved, but this discovery could be a big piece of the cosmic puzzle. Watch the video - http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...83-hidden-galaxies-20160210-premiumvideo.html - to find out how astronomers were able to detect radio waves hundreds of never before seen galaxies.
Yes. Daily news 10 February 2016 Einstein’s last theory confirmed? A guide to gravitational waves Henze, NASA On 11 February, researchers in the US are expected to announce the first direct detection of gravitational waves – ripples in space-time that are the final prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Here’s everything you need to know in advance of this week’s massive physics news. What are gravitational waves? Long predicted but never directly seen, gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of the universe. Albert Einstein compared the universe’s shape to a single fabric, hewn from space and time. According to his theory of general relativity, the force of gravity is the result of curvature in this space-time, and gravitational waves are ripples in it, produced when massive objects like black holes collide. Who has found them? If rumours are to be believed, researchers working on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment. This pair of detectors, sitting 3000 kilometres apart in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, use lasers to pick up tiny variations in space-time that could be caused by a passing gravitational wave. The LIGO team have scheduled a press conference on Thursday, and an exclusive New Scientist analysis suggests they may have seen as many as three such signals. Why does it matter? Einstein’s theory of general relativity revolutionised our understanding of gravity and is one of the great pillars of modern physics. But we know it can’t fully describe the universe because it disagrees with another major theory, quantum mechanics. By studying gravitational waves, the final unconfirmed prediction of Einstein’s theory, physicists may be able to figure out a way to extend it. What else can they do? Besides putting Einstein to the test, the first confirmed observation of gravitational waves will mark the beginning of a new kind of astronomy. Just as we use various electromagnetic wavelengths such as visible light, infrared and X-rays to study the cosmos, gravitational waves will act as a brand new eye on the universe, potentially giving us greater insight into objects like black holes and neutron stars. Has anyone tried to see them before? In 1974, astronomers Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor detected a binary pulsar, a pair of two dead stars emitting pulses of radio waves. Hulse and Taylor realised that the two pulsars were losing energy and slowly spiralling towards each other in a way that was exactly consistent with Einstein’s equations of general relativity: the missing energy is thought to be emitted as gravitational waves. The finding earned the pair the Nobel prize for physics in 1993. Wasn’t there a big fuss over gravitational waves a few years ago? In 2014, researchers on the BICEP2 telescope announced they had seen signs of primordial gravitational waves, ripples created not from modern-day black hole collisions but from the big bang itself. But the team later had to backtrack on these claims, after it turned out they hadn’t accounted for the effects of galactic dust. If LIGO is indeed announcing a discovery tomorrow, they’ll want to be sure to avoid any similar mistakes. Want to know more? Learn about gravitational waves from one of the experts using LIGO data at our upcoming London event
--- "...Gravitational waves are one of the last major, unconfirmed predictions of general relativity, a theory which does a pretty amazing job of explaining gravity. General relativity describes gravity as a result of spacetime being warped due to matter. Gravitational waves are the ripples in spacetime that happen when you shake matter around. They are to the gravitational force what light is to the electric and magnetic forces. But because gravity is much weaker than electromagnetism, we can see light all the time (just look around!) while we need to construct enormous lasers and incredibly (absurdly) precise detectors just to have even a hope of measuring gravitational radiation. Rumors are flying that LIGO, just such a system of lasers and detectors, has found a gravitational wave signal, probably coming from two black holes orbiting and falling into each other (because that's the sort of seismic event you need to make gravitational waves large enough for us to detect). This would most likely confirm what we fully expect is there, rather than reveal something new and shocking about the Universe. Think the Higgs boson a few years ago. It would be a much bigger surprise if this radiation had turned out *not* to be there: general relativity has worked extremely well so far, and we have had indirect but extremely strong evidence for their existence since the 1970s, which won the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics. LIGO's *direct* detection would undoubtedly be Nobel-worthy, too; the only question is whether it would happen this year. This is exciting because a) it's direct, rather than indirect, confirmation that these things are there, and b) they'll open up a whole new window onto the Universe. Pretty much the entirety of astronomy is done by observing electromagnetic radiation, from visible light to X-rays, the ultraviolet, microwaves, what have you. Starting now we'd have a whole other type of radiation to use to probe the cosmos, delivering us a brand new and pristine view of some extreme events involving ultracompact objects like neutron stars and black holes. So all this will probably be announced at the press conference tomorrow, ushering in a new era of astronomy and physics. Or they could just be fucking with us. "
Has this been posted here? Live feed from the ISS. Sure it would put B.o.B into a tizzy about faked videos. http://www.n2yo.com/space-station/
"The resulting power of the merging of the two black holes was 50 times greater than the power put out by of all the stars in the Universe during those 20 milliseconds, put together." Today's reaffirming of what Albert Einstein predicted years ago is being under played. This is huge. For me and you? It will remain to be seen until a couple decades pass. The practical uses will come with our advancement into the future. But, the biggest thing from this is that we now have our own ever improving scientific laboratory that we can utilize to create and prove things otherwise impossible to recreate here. We will be able to look into the massive darkness surrounding us and observe objects we only theoretically predicted to exist. Physics just took an explosive stride forwards with new, profound implications.
"LIGO began its first run in 2002, and hunted through 2010 without finding any gravitational waves. The scientists then shut down the experiment and upgraded nearly every aspect of the detectors, including boosting the power of the lasers and replacing the mirrors, for a subsequentrun, called Advanced LIGO, that began officially on September 18, 2015. Yet even before then the experiment was up and running: the signal arrived on September 14 at 5:51 A.M. Eastern time, reaching the detector in Louisiana seven milliseconds before it got to the detector in Washington." We were able to detect the faint ripples of gravitational waves from a cosmic event that took place 1.3 billion years ago at two separate locations approximately 1882 miles apart, showing us an overlapping image of two massive black holes violently colliding.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016...nstein-s-ripples-spacetime-spotted-first-time Video of Gravitational waves finally detected! Science Magazine Gravitational waves, Einstein’s ripples in spacetime, spotted for first time By Adrian ChoFeb. 11, 2016 , 10:30 AM Long ago, deep in space, two massive black holes—the ultrastrong gravitational fields left behind by gigantic stars that collapsed to infinitesimal points—slowly drew together. The stellar ghosts spiraled ever closer, until, about 1.3 billion years ago, they whirled about each other at half the speed of light and finally merged. The collision sent a shudder through the universe: ripples in the fabric of space and time called gravitational waves. Five months ago, they washed past Earth. And, for the first time, physicists detected the waves, fulfilling a 4-decade quest and opening new eyes on the heavens. Here's the first person to spot those gravitational waves The discovery marks a triumph for the 1000 physicists with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of gigantic instruments in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. Rumors of the detection had circulated for months. Today, at a press conference in Washington, D.C., the LIGO team made it official. “We did it!” says David Reitze, a physicist and LIGO executive director at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. “All the rumors swirling around out there got most of it right.” Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves 100 years ago, but directly detecting them required mind-boggling technological prowess and a history of hunting. (See a timeline below of the history of the search for gravitational waves.) LIGO researchers sensed a wave that stretched space by one part in 1021, making the entire Earth expand and contract by 1/100,000 of a nanometer, about the width of an atomic nucleus. The observation tests Einstein’s theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity, with unprecedented rigor and provides proof positive that black holes exist. “It will win a Nobel Prize,” says Marc Kamionkowski, a theorist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. LIGO watches for a minuscule stretching of space with what amounts to ultraprecise rulers: two L-shaped contraptions called interferometers with arms 4 kilometers long. Mirrors at the ends of each arm form a long “resonant cavity,” in which laser light of a precise wavelength bounces back and forth, resonating just as sound of a specific pitch rings in an organ pipe. Where the arms meet, the two beams can overlap. If they have traveled different distances along the arms, their waves will wind up out of step and interfere with each other. That will cause some of the light to warble out through an exit called a dark port in synchrony with undulations of the wave. From the interference, researchers can compare the relative lengths of the two arms to within 1/10,000 the width of a proton—enough sensitivity to see a passing gravitational wave as it stretches the arms by different amounts. To spot such tiny displacements, however, scientists must damp out vibrations such as the rumble of seismic waves, the thrum of traffic, and the crashing of waves on distant coastlines. V. Altounian/Science On 14 September 2015, at 9:50:45 universal time—4:50 a.m. in Louisiana and 2:50 a.m. in Washington—LIGO’s automated systems detected just such a signal. The oscillation emerged at a frequency of 35 cycles per second, or Hertz, and sped up to 250 Hz before disappearing 0.25 seconds later. The increasing frequency, or chirp, jibes with two massive bodies spiraling into each other. The 0.007-second delay between the signals in Louisiana and Washington is the right timing for a light-speed wave zipping across both detectors. The signal exceeds the “five-sigma” standard of statistical significance that physicists use to claim a discovery, LIGO researchers report in a paper scheduled to be published in Physical Review Letters to coincide with the press conference. It’s so strong it can be seen in the raw data, says Gabriela González, a physicist at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, and spokesperson for the LIGO scientific collaboration. “If you filter the data, the signal is obvious to the eye,” she says. Comparison with computer simulations reveals that the wave came from two objects 29 and 36 times as massive as the sun spiraling to within 210 kilometers of each other before merging. Only a black hole—which is made of pure gravitational energy and gets its mass through Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2—can pack so much mass into so little space, says Bruce Allen, a LIGO member at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hanover, Germany. The observation provides the first evidence for black holes that does not depend on watching hot gas or stars swirl around them at far greater distances. “Before, you could argue in principle whether or not black holes exist,” Allen says. “Now you can’t.” The collision produced an astounding, invisible explosion. Modeling shows that the final black hole totals 62 solar masses—3 solar masses less than the sum of the initial black holes. The missing mass vanished in gravitational radiation—a conversion of mass to energy that makes an atomic bomb look like a spark. “For a tenth of a second [the collision] shines brighter than all of the stars in all the galaxies,” Allen says. “But only in gravitational waves.” The LIGO facility in Livingston, Louisiana, has a twin in Hanford, Washington. © ATMOSPHERE AERIAL Other stellar explosions called gamma-ray bursts can also briefly outshine the stars, but the explosive black-hole merger sets a mind-bending record, says Kip Thorne, a gravitational theorist at Caltech who played a leading role in LIGO’s development. “It is by far the most powerful explosion humans have ever detected except for the big bang,” he says. For 5 months, LIGO physicists struggled to keep a lid on their pupating discovery. Ordinarily, most team members would not have known whether the signal was real. LIGO regularly salts its data readings with secret false signals called “blind injections” to test the equipment and keep researchers on their toes. But on 14 September 2015, that blind injection system was not running. Physicists had only recently completed a 5-year, $205 million upgrade of the machines, and several systems—including the injection system—were still offline as the team wound up a preliminary “engineering run.” As a result, the whole collaboration knew that the observation was likely real. “I was convinced that day,” González says. Still, LIGO physicists had to rule out every alternative, including the possibility that the reading was a malicious hoax. “We spent about a month looking at the ways that somebody could spoof a signal,” Reitze says, before deciding it was impossible. For González, making the checks “was a heavy responsibility,” she says. “This was the first detection of gravitational waves, so there was no room for a mistake.” Proving that gravitational waves exist may not be LIGO’s most important legacy, as there has been compelling indirect evidence for them. In 1974, U.S. astronomers Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor discovered a pair of radio-emitting neutron stars called pulsars orbiting each other. By timing the pulsars, Taylor and colleague Joel Weisberg demonstrated that they are very slowly spiraling toward each other—as they should if they’re radiating gravitational waves. It is by far the most powerful explosion humans have ever detected except for the big bang. Kip Thorne It is the prospect of the science that might be done with gravitational waves that really excites physicists. For example, says Kamionkowski, the theorist at Johns Hopkins, the first LIGO result shows the power of such radiation to reveal unseen astrophysical objects like the two ill-fated black holes. “This opens a new window on this vast population of stellar remnants that we know are out there but of which we have seen only a tiny fraction,” he says. The observation also paves the way for testing general relativity as never before, Kamionkowski says. Until now, physicists have studied gravity only in conditions where the force is relatively weak. By studying gravitational waves, they can now explore extreme conditions in which the energy in an object’s gravitational field accounts for most or all of its mass—the realm of strong gravity so far explored by theorists alone. Rainer Weiss at the New York Science Fair. Matt Weber With the black hole merger, general relativity has passed the first such test, says Rainer Weiss, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, who came up with the original idea for LIGO. “The things you calculate from Einstein’s theory look exactly like the signal,” he says. “To me, that’s a miracle.” The detection of gravitational waves marks the culmination of a decades-long quest that began in 1972, when Weiss wrote a paper outlining the basic design of LIGO. In 1979, the National Science Foundation funded research and development work at both MIT and Caltech, and LIGO construction began in 1994. The $272 million instruments started taking data in 2001, although it was not until the upgrade that physicists expected a signal. If LIGO’s discovery merits a Nobel Prize, who should receive it? Scientists say Weiss is a shoo-in, but he demurs. “I don’t like to think of it,” he says. “If it wins a Nobel Prize, it shouldn’t be for the detection of gravitational waves. Hulse and Taylor did that.” Many researchers say other worthy recipients would include Ronald Drever, the first director of the project at Caltech who made key contributions to LIGO’s design, and Thorne, the Caltech theorist who championed the project. Thorne also objects. “The people who really deserve the credit are the experimenters who pulled this off, starting with Rai and Ron,” he says. Meanwhile, other detections may come quickly. LIGO researchers are still analyzing data from their first observing run with their upgraded detectors, which ended 12 January, and they plan to start taking data again in July. A team in Italy hopes to turn on its rebuilt VIRGO detector—an interferometer with 3-kilometer arms—later this year. Physicists eagerly await the next wave. See more of Science's coverage of gravitational waves. From prediction to reality: a history of the search for gravitational waves 1915 - Albert Einstein publishes general theory of relativity, explains gravity as the warping of spacetime by mass or energy 1916 - Einstein predicts massive objects whirling in certain ways will cause spacetime ripples—gravitational waves 1936 - Einstein has second thoughts and argues in a manuscript that the waves don't exist—until reviewer points out a mistake 1962 - Russian physicists M. E. Gertsenshtein and V. I. Pustovoit publish paper sketch optical method for detecting gravitational waves—to no notice 1969 - Physicist Joseph Weber claims gravitational wave detection using massive aluminum cylinders—replication efforts fail 1972 - Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge independently proposes optical method for detecting waves 1974 - Astronomers discover pulsar orbiting a neutron star that appears to be slowing down due to gravitational radiation—work that later earns them a Nobel Prize 1979 - National Science Foundation (NSF) funds California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and MIT to develop design for LIGO 1990 - NSF agrees to fund $250 million LIGO experiment 1992 - Sites in Washington and Louisiana selected for LIGO facilities; construction starts 2 years later 1995 - Construction starts on GEO600 gravitational wave detector in Germany, which partners with LIGO and starts taking data in 2002 1996 - Construction starts on VIRGO gravitational wave detector in Italy, which starts taking data in 2007 2002–2010 - Runs of initial LIGO—no detection of gravitational waves 2007 - LIGO and VIRGO teams agree to share data, forming a single global network of gravitational wave detectors 2010–2015 - $205 million upgrade of LIGO detectors 2015 - Advanced LIGO begins initial detection runs in September 2016 - On 11 February, NSF and LIGO team announce successful detection of gravitational waves
I love space and think I understand quite a bit and then I read about things like that and feel so fucking dumb. Just amazing stuff.
space-time ripples. I get the effects on physical objects. But gravity having an effect on time is mind bottling. I kinda get it, but I don't really get it. I know they are saying this is a great new way to explore, and discover. but...could we ever somehow use this to alter time?
I believe that yes, black hole gravity waves are the only thing large enough to produce **detectable** gravity waves.
Other potential sources that can produce gravational waves could be large binary star systems that are composed of lumpy white dwarfs or neutron stars. Perfect spherical stars can not create gravitational waves.
Yes, that is my understanding as well. I guess we will find out, eventually, if we can detect the big bang gravitational waves.
Imagine you have a balloon that keeps a constant perfectly spherical shape as you inflate and deflate it over and over. The shape remains the same, while the only property changing is its radius - from dense and small to large and spaced. There is no pulsing or oscillating as it expands and collapses due to the shape remaining the same. Thus, there is no kinetic energy and no gravitational radiation given off. When you consider binary star systems or non-spherical objects, you have irregularities and asymmetrical movements. It spins around, constantly changing its shape and size. Thus, you have large amounts of mass and energy being thrown around that distorts space and time.
In theory time travel is possible, but not in reality. I once read that if you could take a space ship and whip it through outer space and catch the gravity around a large object (cant remember if it was a planet or black hole or what ) which would "warp time". Space ship returns to earth back in time. So its not realistic, but the scientists believe that it is theoretically possible. Ill try to find the article im talking about
Yeah, it's basically the wobble that they can detect. For instance, swing a ball on the end of a rope and hit a wall with it, it transfers some energy to the wall even though it doesn't move in a visible way. The wobbling black holes are slamming into the space around them and alter space and time just a little. That sound right Emma?
I thought I remembered hearing that astronauts who went to the moon would lose a few seconds of time during their trip. Something about proximity to a gravitational force, and the strength of the gravitational field.
Speed and gravitational strength also change time. The more gravity, the slower time moves for you (the relative part of the theory of relativity means it's only as to the person/entity experiencing it). Think super gravity near the black hole in interstellar on the giant wave planet. The characters on earth aged years per hour that the crew was on the planet because of the high gravity. Also, as you go faster, time slows down for you. This can be seen by synching watches on the wrist of a person traveling on a super fast train with a person not on the train. Their watches will not read the same exact time after a certain distance. This is why time traveling into the future is most definitely possible if humans had a mode of transportation that was fast enough or humans got into a situation with enough gravity. Traveling into the past is an entirely separate thing that probably isn't possible, from what I've read/heard from smart people.
it's an odd concept. The relative part is tough to wrap your mind around. The astronauts in Interstellar didn't travel into the future, right? Time just moved slower relative to the people on earth, so when they get back together less time had elapsed.
Right. But as you go faster you also experience less time and less distance. This is why, since the speed of light is the theoretical fastest speed anything can travel, relativity says light particles do not experience time. Or distance If a light particle were a sentient being it would get to its destination at the same time as when it left. The experience would be as though it were teleported. Even if it traveled the entire length of the universe.
It's more along the lines that time moves more slowly for those moving quickly or in a stronger gravitational field. So, the person wouldnt actually go "back" in time. But, rather they aged less than those on Earth (lets assume this is Normal velocity and normal gravitational force). You and someone are born on the same day and age the same until your 45th birthdays. You go to some planet with huge gravitational forces for exactly 1 earth year. The other guy will be on his 46th birthday when you return. While you may only be one day past your 45th birthday. So I guess you go "back in time" relative to the people that stayed on earth.
I believe the answer is yes. This is one of those occurrences where we have to think about the space/time membrane as the surface of a pond, and the ripple LIGO detected as a rock dropped into that pond. Our reality, all height, width, and depth, is contained in that surface. The ripple getting to us is not unlike looking at slow-mo of a shockwave from an explosion. For a brief moment as the leading edge of the ripple gets to us, EVERYTHING in our 3-dimensional existence is closer. And as soon as it passes, EVERYTHING on the other side is a tiny bit further away. Then things snap back to normal.
So this guy on my Facebook responded to some articles I shared about this saying he doesn't believe they will find tangible evidence that gravitational waves exist. I'm like did you not read thee articles?
ask him if he would like to wager some money. And if he says yes, say thanks and link the same article to him again.
He's a good friend but also a reason I'm glad I'm not friends with more TMBers. Many people I grew up with that are nice as hell would end up in the stupid things on Facebook thread.
Here is a vid describing how LIGO works a little more, IIRC it was pretty fucking cool. I think it randomly popped up in a Cosmos episode I watched a few weeks back, so it's funny that this news broke today.
This is one comment from him Who are we (humans) to be experts in something that we did not create. Humans make up shit like this to make themselves feel good and "worth something", because they "discovered" something that was already there and then come up with bs vocabulary that I'm sure takes them months to correctly annunciate their own creations.