Gravitational waves

[Ron]

Trying to impeach relatively straightforward mathematics of things like redshift of distant galaxies, placement of geological strata, or isotope ratios in rocks, by conflating them with the slippery fractal chaos of weather isn't the best way to build an indictment of science/secular-humanism... but whatever.

Mostly I'm impeaching the regal certainty pronouncements are made with; only to see discoveries be modified or changed some time later down the road. I realize change is what happens in science but in the interim we get a bunch of folks (politicians etc) trying to change culture and mores based upon whatever the latest craze is in science. 

Then you get the empty scientism fanbois who wield their snark based upon the  authority of "science".

[dogmush]

Do you even history, Bro?

[Perd Hapley]

Mostly I'm impeaching the regal certainty pronouncements are made with; only to see discoveries be modified or changed some time later down the road. I realize change is what happens in science but in the interim we get a bunch of folks (politicians etc) trying to change culture and mores based upon whatever the latest craze is in science.  

Then you get the empty scientism fanbois who wield their snark based upon the  authority of "science".

I thought you were riffing on the way that some people are mocked for believing in religious explanations for the natural world, while most of those doing the mocking put their faith in scientific explanations they don't begin to understand, much less understand the evidence for.

[Ron]

I thought you were riffing on the way that some people are mocked for believing in religious explanations for the natural world, while most of those doing the mocking put their faith in scientific explanations they don't begin to understand, much less understand the evidence for.

We all do that, that is the human condition.

[cordex]

Say, wasn't it a Catholic priest who first put forward the idea that became the Big Bang theory and the concept of an expanding universe?

[Perd Hapley]

Say, wasn't it a Catholic priest who first put forward the idea that became the Big Bang theory and the concept of an expanding universe?

Nope. Ted Cruz started that rumor.

[Ron]

Nobody posted a trigger warning before charbys post and I was triggered 

In case anyone has any doubts I'm not a fan of post modernism, dialectical materialism and the religious movement it has spawned that many call scientism.

Modern Americans by and large live their lives practically, as if the Christian presuppositions are true, all the while holding a philosophy or cosmology of life that if followed through to its logical conclusion leads to nihilism.

Yes, I realize that scientists, like every facet of humanity, hold a vast array of secular as well as religious views.

Like I mentioned, I blame charby, in the spirit of 21st century victimhood it cannot be my fault.



 

[AJ Dual]

What I'd like to know, putting aside all the hellish x-rays and gamma rays that I'm sure a black-hole merger would create, even just from sparse interstellar hydrogen...

Would you feel anything if you were close enough, but were far away enough that the usual tidal effects of being near a black hole aren't at issue?

[Ron]

What I'd like to know, putting aside all the hellish x-rays and gamma rays that I'm sure a black-hole merger would create, even just from sparse interstellar hydrogen...

Would you feel anything if you were close enough, but were far away enough that the usual tidal effects of being near a black hole aren't at issue?

Thank God for the the anthropic principle 

[charby]

Nobody posted a trigger warning before charbys post and I was triggered 

In case anyone has any doubts I'm not a fan of post modernism, dialectical materialism and the religious movement it has spawned that many call scientism.

Modern Americans by and large live their lives practically, as if the Christian presuppositions are true, all the while holding a philosophy or cosmology of life that if followed through to its logical conclusion leads to nihilism.

Yes, I realize that scientists, like every facet of humanity, hold a vast array of secular as well as religious views.

Like I mentioned, I blame charby, in the spirit of 21st century victimhood it cannot be my fault.



 

Sounds like you need to go to your safe space.

[Ron]

Sounds like you need to go to your safe space.

but but this is my safe space!

[RocketMan]

Everything else aside, why does an image of a grinning Enstein riding a surfboard on a "gravity wave" against an interstellar backdrop keep popping into my head?

[230RN]

Somehow I'm reminded of the cartoon showing a thoughtful Einstein standing in front of a blackboard mostly filled with esoteric equations. His hand is poised with chalk over a relatively empty space, ready to write again.

In that almost empty space appears the chalked equations:

E = m a² (this equation is crosssed out)
E = m b² (this equation is crosssed out)

and he's ready to write...

[birdman]

Everything else aside, why does an image of a grinning Enstein riding a surfboard on a "gravity wave" against an interstellar backdrop keep popping into my head?

GAH!  Gravity waves aren't dipole waves! 

[AJ Dual]

GAH!  Gravity waves aren't dipole waves! 

Brain hurts... I'm at the bleeding edge of what I can kinda understand.

Wouldn't a spherical or point source of gravity, the monopole falls by uh... square of the distance?

And a quadrapole gravitational waves fall off by the fourth power of the distance?

THAT puts the massive power of that event LIGO recorded into perspective, above/beyond the "All the stars in the universe if it was light" analogies. 

[birdman]

Brain hurts... I'm at the bleeding edge of what I can kinda understand.

Wouldn't a spherical or point source of gravity, the monopole falls by uh... square of the distance?

And a quadrapole gravitational waves fall off by the fourth power of the distance?

THAT puts the massive power of that event LIGO recorded into perspective, above/beyond the "All the stars in the universe if it was light" analogies. 

No, I mean it like this: (IIRC, it's been a while)
A light wave is a dipole wave, I.e. The electric field vector oscillates in a plane, and there isn't a cross-component (of the electric field), so a point charge experiences a force up and down in that plane.

A gravity wave is a quadrupole wave, meaning at any point there is a contraction in one direction perpendicular to its propagation, and an expansion in the other perpendicular direction, so a point mass doesn't experience a force in any one direction, but rather a compression in one direction and expansion in the other (note that these are space time effects, since the force acts on all particles in the mass at once).
The LIGO detector works best if the direction of the wave is perpendicular to the legs of the L, so one leg gets shorter, and the other gets longer, and that effect oscillates back and forth.  A wave traveling in the plane of the detector would only affect one leg.
Again, if I remember correctly.

So the conventional wave analog doesn't really hold...

[charby]

So the conventional wave analog doesn't really hold...

[RocketMan]

GAH!  Gravity waves aren't dipole waves!  

 
I know, but allow me my goofy image.  I'm trying to inject a little humor here.