LIGO announcement on Friday

[Somnium (Aidan)]

The LIGO team are gearing up to make an announcement on the 11/2 (US time) with strong rumours that they will announce the detection f gravitational waves. Such an elusive outcome of Einstein's theory of general relativity reminds me of the search and eventual detection of Neutrinos (not that i was alive at the time) exciting stuff!

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...-announcement/

[traveller (Bo)]

Yes, waiting for the announcement. Assuming they have isolated the wave and eliminated the possibility of earth based movements causing the interference pattern.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

I would imagine that earth based gravitational fluctuations would give a significantly different signal. They should be able to tease the signal out of the noise, otherwise there would have been no point building the thing in the first place

[Satchmo]

Thats potentially exciting news .

Australia had a big hand in the early days of LIGO . We worked on the Ligo Pathfinder optics and first iteration instrumental optics at CSIRO Division of Applied Physics winning the contract for the worlds smoothest and most accurate fused silica surfaces over competitors like Hughes- Danbury who were known for the Hubble Space Telescope.

The recent starvation of funds to the CSIRO by the Abbott government was the death nell to this fantastic technological capability .

[gary]

Nicely written article by Marcus Strom in the Sydney Morning Herald today -
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci...10-gmqysz.html

Announcement will be at 2:30am AEST Friday morning (i.e. tomorrow).

Originally Posted by Satchmo

Australia had a big hand in the early days of LIGO . We worked on the Ligo Pathfinder optics and first iteration instrumental optics at CSIRO Division of Applied Physics winning the contract for the worlds smoothest and most accurate fused silica surfaces over competitors like Hughes- Danbury who were known for the Hubble Space Telescope.

That's fabulous Mark. I wasn't aware of this.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

Originally Posted by gary

Nicely written article by Marcus Strom in the Sydney Morning Herald today -
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci...10-gmqysz.html

Announcement will be at 2:30am AEST Friday morning (i.e. tomorrow).



That's fabulous Mark. I wasn't aware of this.

So, anyone watching it live?

[glend (Glen)]

I would watch it, at 3:30am ADST NSW I believe, if I had a link to the press conference, I can't find one. Anyone have it?

[Somnium (Aidan)]

http://www.ligo.org/news/media-advisory.php

there is a media stream but looks like you have to contact someone for the link. i am sure there is a public stream as well ...

[Satchmo]

I'll go for that extra 5 hours sleep so i can better understand the results

Originally Posted by gary

That's fabulous Mark. I wasn't aware of this.

http://spie.org/Publications/Proceed...1117/12.279139

Gary : I 'll have to dig out the original paper, to refresh my memory on the extremely high specs . Eventually US optical shops improved on our results using ion beam figuring which wasn't matured here yet and did it cheaper , but the the first iteration of LIGO used CSIRO made optics which everyone involved is very proud of . Its not info you will find easily in the history of the LIGO project.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

interesting APOD

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

[mr bruess]

Einstein will be proven right again about gravity waves

[gary]

Originally Posted by Satchmo

http://spie.org/Publications/Proceed...1117/12.279139

Gary : I 'll have to dig out the original paper, to refresh my memory on the extremely high specs . Eventually US optical shops improved on our results using ion beam figuring which wasn't matured here yet and did it cheaper , but the the first iteration of LIGO used CSIRO made optics which everyone involved is very proud of . Its not info you will find easily in the history of the LIGO project.

Thanks for the link to the paper Mark.

I also Googled and found this 2009 press release -
http://www.acpo.csiro.au/news/ligo1.htm

The recent starvation of funds to the CSIRO by the Abbott government was the death nell to this fantastic technological capability

Unfortunately the attrition has not ended under the Turnbull government either -
http://cpsu-csiro.org.au/2016/02/05/...low/#more-3956
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/cl...09-gmpyl6.html
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/cl...03-gml7jy.html
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politi...10-gmr03b.html

[glend (Glen)]

I watched the streamed press conference and it was all great news, yes they have observed gravitational waves; giving birth to the era of gravitational wave astronomy. It is well worth watching this excellent good news story.

[csb (Craig)]

ELink to our own ABC news with a short video that explains, with animation & audio, how the waves were detected.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-0...riment/7160562

Astounding that Einstein predicted gravitational waves considering how minute they are - smaller than the size of atoms!

[gary]

Reporting on today's announcement, Marcus Strom in the Sydney Morning Herald writes -

Originally Posted by Marcus Strom. Sydney Morning Herald

The discovery was made at the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US. Australian scientists from the Australian National University, University of Western Australia, University of Adelaide, University of Melbourne, Monash University, Charles Sturt University and the CSIRO are celebrating their role in the discovery

A recent $200-million upgrade of LIGO helped scientists detect the gravitational waves. One of the components in the upgrade was the installation of high-performance optical mirrors, many of which were coated by researchers from CSIRO.

The mirrors are among the most uniform and highly precise ever made, which ensures that LIGO's laser remains clean and stable as it travels through the detectors.

See http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci...11-gmr9ja.html

[Satchmo]

Great news in the announcement today .

Originally Posted by gary

Thanks for the link to the paper Mark.

I also Googled and found this 2009 press release -
http://www.acpo.csiro.au/news/ligo1.htm

Yes , the CSIRO based 'ACPO' still had a hand in the optical coatings for the Advanced Ligo - a fantastic achievement for Australian research based technology .

[Rob P]

A quickly put together podcast from the BBC science team about the announcement. Runs for about 30 minutes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06zj4dl

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by csb

Astounding that Einstein predicted gravitational waves considering how minute they are - smaller than the size of atoms!

Not just smaller than an atom - the measured disturbances are about 1/10,000 the size of an atomic nucleus, which is itself less than 1/10,000 of the diameter of the atom.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

Not just smaller than an atom - the measured disturbances are about 1/10,000 the size of an atomic nucleus, which is itself less than 1/10,000 of the diameter of the atom.

it is amazing we can measure that !!

[gary]

If you did not stay up to watch the NSF press conference last night, you
can watch it on YouTube here -

Start at 26:42

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEPIwEJmZyE

It is definitely worth watching.

In a nutshell, two black holes in the order of 30 solar masses each merged
over 1 billion years ago somewhere in the direction of the Large Magellanic
Cloud and this merger was detected by LIGO detectors in Washington
state and Louisiana on September 14th 2015.

The gravitational pulse lasted a fraction of a second and has the same
tell-tale signature as predicted by supercomputer simulation.

The discovery not only validates the existence of gravitational waves
but also of binary black holes.

You can hear an audible representation of the gravitational waves from the black hole merger at 45:50.

The contribution of the Australian Research Council is acknowledged
both in the opening remarks of the NSF Director and later in the
press conference.