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    Gravitational Waves: How Einstein’s spacetime ripples reveal the secrets of the universe
    Unavailable
    Gravitational Waves: How Einstein’s spacetime ripples reveal the secrets of the universe
    Unavailable
    Gravitational Waves: How Einstein’s spacetime ripples reveal the secrets of the universe
    Ebook177 pages3 hours

    Gravitational Waves: How Einstein’s spacetime ripples reveal the secrets of the universe

    By Brian Clegg

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    About this ebook

    On 14 September 2015, after 50 years of searching, gravitational waves were detected for the first time and astronomy changed for ever.




    Until then, investigation of the universe had depended on electromagnetic radiation: visible light, radio, X-rays and the rest. But gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space and time – are unrelenting, passing through barriers that stop light dead.




    At the two 4-kilometre long LIGO observatories in the US, scientists developed incredibly sensitive detectors, capable of spotting a movement 100 times smaller than the nucleus of an atom. In 2015 they spotted the ripples produced by two black holes spiralling into each other, setting spacetime quivering.




    This was the first time black holes had ever been directly detected – and it promises far more for the future of astronomy. Brian Clegg presents a compelling story of human technical endeavour and a new, powerful path to understand the workings of the universe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIcon Books
    Release dateFeb 8, 2018
    ISBN9781785783210
    Author

    Brian Clegg

    BRIAN CLEGG is the author of Ten Billion Tomorrows, Final Frontier, Extra Sensory, Gravity, How to Build a Time Machine, Armageddon Science, Before the Big Bang, Upgrade Me, and The God Effect among others. He holds a physics degree from Cambridge and has written regular columns, features, and reviews for numerous magazines. He lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife and two children.

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    • 5/5
      By complete coincidence, last night I had my amateur radio telescope pointed at a certain part of the sky. I had left the recording equipment on, and when I played it back this morning there was this strange message:"Oh freddled gruntbuggly,Thy micturations are to meAs plurdled gabbleblotchits in a lurgid bee.Group, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,And hooptiously thrangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,For otherwise I will rend thee in the gobberwartswuhWith my burglecruncheon."See if I don't!"(*Douglas-Adams-turning-in-his-grave*)Black holes...That explains where all my spoons, biros, unicorns, and my wife's hair-clips that keep disappearing end up in. In order to find the Black Hole, we simply follow a large number of my smelly socks to their destination ((nah, the Unicorns are down to Noah; the silly sod got so drunk and confused he filled the Ark with the reject list, so instead of Unicorns, Centaurs, Mimsy Borogroves & c we ended up with the poisonous snakes and spiders, naked mole rats and the various parasites, viruses and such that infest the world now thanks to Noah's love of booze. Of course the book makes him out to be a hero, but who do you think wrote it? He and his family are the only people left, no wonder it's a hagiography! Hell, you don't want to hear what he got up to with the Mermaids!).I wish we had a theory of quantum gravity.What we describe as waves in a sea of energy aren't real waves but a representation of probabilities at locations. Particles can come in and out of existence at random, but they may hang around for quite a long time. Long enough to bind together into atoms, which accrete into a planet and eventually get taken up by a tree which is cut down to make my chair. The only visible signal would be if some material around the black holes started crashing together. The energy from the black holes themselves spiralling in just comes out as gravitational waves. You get visible light from the accretion disks of black holes, which are typically pulled off companion stars. But binaries both of whose components are black holes don't have companion stars, and hence have no accretion disks. So they are expected to be very dark electromagnetically. Energy doesn't have to be visible.Gravity waves are it. I don't know that you would necessarily see any "visible signal", unless by "visible" one simply meant detectable, e.g. visible telemetry data. In which case it's exactly what LIGO and VIRGO are doing as Clegg shows.