Gravitational waves observed for the first time, proving Albert Einstein right 100 years on.

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tehgerbil

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#191686 12-Feb-2016 11:13

Scientists have for the first time observed elusive gravitational waves – tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by violent astronomical events.

The discovery, announced overnight in Washington DC, confirms the last outstanding prediction made by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

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#1491100 12-Feb-2016 12:44

Also 50 years later confirming a prediction made by New Zealander apparently

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11588322

freitasm

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#1491106 12-Feb-2016 12:52

He's the man...

Addressing the French Philosophical Society at the Sorbonne (6 April 1922): "If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."

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mdav056

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#1491155 12-Feb-2016 14:34

Great, so it seems we have another way of seeing (or hearing?) deep into space (was it 1.6 billion light years away or something) -- of seeing what happened that many years ago. What *I* want to know is -- what's happening out there now! Let's work on that, then... ;)

gml

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#1491160 12-Feb-2016 14:45

This is a game changer for astronomy

linw

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#1491171 12-Feb-2016 14:57

mdav056:

Great, so it seems we have another way of seeing (or hearing?) deep into space (was it 1.6 billion light years away or something) -- of seeing what happened that many years ago. What *I* want to know is -- what's happening out there now! Let's work on that, then... ;)

LOL!

freitasm

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#1491175 12-Feb-2016 15:03

Look this way. Mankind is now able to "Listen" and "Watch" something that happened billions of years ago and only now received on Earth. Thanks to science we can determine the distance traveled by signals and therefore time taken for this travel to happen. This obviously prove that Earth wasn't created around 6,000 years ago as some want us to believe.

Obviously these same people don't believe in science anyway, so this must be work of the Devil.

But I digress.

Science FTW.

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gzt

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#1491221 12-Feb-2016 15:35

Gravity is just a theory.

surfisup1000

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#1491223 12-Feb-2016 15:37

Love this stuff.

Unfortunately this spells the end of faster than light communications though.

Now that gravity has a speed.

mdav056

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#1491226 12-Feb-2016 15:40

@freitasm

Look this way. Mankind is now able to "Listen" and "Watch" something that happened billions of years ago and only now received on Earth. Thanks to science we can determine the distance traveled by signals and therefore time taken for this travel to happen. This obviously prove that Earth wasn't created around 6,000 years ago as some want us to believe.

No it doesn't. Unless the alien swarms circling around the erstwhile binary black holes have been watching us for more than 6000 years already--gosh, perhaps they posted on the intergalactic net that Earth just formed! But that post may take an awfully long time to get to our inboxes.

The Earthly parallel is, of course, watching Coro on free-to-air TV. Which is certainly the work of the Devil.

gml

ubergeeknz

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#1491229 12-Feb-2016 15:43

surfisup1000:

Love this stuff.

Unfortunately this spells the end of faster than light communications though.

Now that gravity has a speed.

Not necessarily, this tech paves the way for potentially spotting wormholes.

freitasm

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#1491230 12-Feb-2016 15:50

gzt: Gravity is just a theory.

Not sure if serious¹...

¹Scientific theory. "[A] well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. As with most (if not all) forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory capability."

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surfisup1000

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#1491237 12-Feb-2016 15:58

ubergeeknz:

surfisup1000:

Love this stuff.

Unfortunately this spells the end of faster than light communications though.

Now that gravity has a speed.

Not necessarily, this tech paves the way for potentially spotting wormholes.

ha, i first read this and a mark on my screen made it look like 'wombles'... but, yes, you are right!

ubergeeknz

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#1491238 12-Feb-2016 15:59

surfisup1000:

ubergeeknz:

surfisup1000:

Love this stuff.

Unfortunately this spells the end of faster than light communications though.

Now that gravity has a speed.

Not necessarily, this tech paves the way for potentially spotting wormholes.

ha, i first read this and a mark on my screen made it look like 'wombles'... but, yes, you are right!

Now a machine able to spot Wombles... that really would be useful!

Fred99

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#1491258 12-Feb-2016 16:14

freitasm:

Look this way. Mankind is now able to "Listen" and "Watch" something that happened billions of years ago and only now received on Earth. Thanks to science we can determine the distance traveled by signals and therefore time taken for this travel to happen. This obviously prove that Earth wasn't created around 6,000 years ago as some want us to believe.

Obviously these same people don't believe in science anyway, so this must be work of the Devil.

But I digress.

Science FTW.

Not quite that simple...

To estimate when something distant happened, you have to know how far away it is in the first place. In the case of this binary black hole system merging, they back-calculated from amplitude measurement, to come to a figure of between 600 million and 1.8 billion (light) years. I'm not sure how the 1.3 billion year figure came about - 1.2 billion years would have been half way - perhaps a reporter was worse at arithmetic than me. They also don't know where this happened very accurately - triangulation using only two detectors doesn't quite cut the mustard in three dimensional space.

Anyway, there's nothing to disprove faith in god having created the earth 6000 years ago, complete with dinosaur bones and geological evidence etc to trick those of little faith to believe it might have happened without him. That he did such a brilliant job with that deception serves only to support belief in his power.

TwoSeven

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#1491340 12-Feb-2016 19:09

While I understand the math behind the concept, at the moment I have not heard enough about the experiment to be convinced that some other phenomenon is not at play such as compression in some other field type force. I guess at some stage more details will be published where they say what kind of things have been tested for and excluded.

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