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Originally Posted by renormalised
IMO...too early yet to really say anything. Has it occurred to them that their detector might not be sensitive enough and that's why they haven't found any gravitational waves from the Big Bang.
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The point of the article was to say, given the sensitivity of existing detectors and non-detection, an upper limit of gravity waves, if any, exists.
They are not saying gravity waves don't exist, simply if they do exist in the background, then they can not big larger than X because otherwise their instruments would have detected it.
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They can only surmise in theory what energy/wavelength/frequency the gravitational waves (hence, gravitons) will be, but that doesn't mean to say that is in fact the case. In actual fact, apart from what Einstein had come up with about gravity in his theories, they really know nothing about it. Much of what they think they know about it is still conjecture...maths on a blackboard. It maybe right, but then again it may not be...even though quite a few observations made over the years tend to support the theory and the maths which underlie it.
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Gravitons comes from the standard model's idea of force as an exchange of mediator particle. It is quite distinct with the idea of gravity waves which stem from a view of gravity as curvature in space-time.
Current detectors are not looking for gravitons, they are looking for gravity waves - ripples in space time. The detection of gravity waves will do nothing, afaik, for gravitons, but will confirm a prediction of general relativity.
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Here's a clanger....what if they never find gravitons.
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Then we will have to come up with better theories
At least now there is something to do
