Gravitational waves from black holes detected

If this proves that Einstein was right all along he should sue anyone that calls it a theory from now on. Those people who have always claimed that he only had a "general theory" about stuff must feel pretty stupid now.
 
Judgeneo said:
Just about the only thing we can think of that would cause detectable waves is the collision of two black holes. As they collide they spin around each other a lot, and thats the violent movement which causes ripples in spacetime.

There are two measurements, so we can see the speed of the wave (which is the speed of light, and confirms that gravitation are as massless as photons).

Speed of the wave, and the shape and size of the perturbance can be used to say approximately how big the two colliding masses were, and how far away using general relativity.
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Are gravitational waves subject to interference patterns during their 1.8 billion year journey to us? It just seems all a bit to fantastic for them to not only directly detect them for the first time but also to say exactly what caused them and how far away.
 
ChroniC said:
I am no scientist but couldn't we have just assumed they existed.
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It is a matter of coming up with theories, and then excluding the ones that turn out to have no basis. You can't have 100's of people working on different ideas, you have to start eliminating the wrong ones.

Like if they didn't find anything after a few more years, then you'd have to explain that somehow. Is the experiment flawed, or is the theory flawed.
 
How we went from being hunter gatherers to understanding and detecting gravitons and black holes millions of light years away that we can't see will never cease to amaze.
 
Von Smallhausen said:
It's pretty mind blowing that Mr Einstein theorised this a century ago.
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+++:)

I read about this today, the Times article said that we have 'general relativity' which explains big things, but not small. And we have 'quantum physics' which explains little things, but not big.

And I was wondering what will join the two? Do physicists currently have a working theory or theories of how they relate? Does there even have to be an answer?

If you answer that question here do you immediately qualify for a Nobel prize? :p

Incidentally, I like this, helped my non-physicist brain understand mavity, I hope you like it.

 
No theory for everything yet. If you crack yes you'll get Nobel prize.
Lots of partial theories like string, m and the like. But mon really provable. Some can possibly be disproved by the energies the LHC ia getting towards. It doesn't have to be unified, but we've already unified some forces and it makes sense if there is a unified theory.


If your interest read parallel worlds by michio kaku. Mainly m theory. But it does a good job of explaining where we are. Or were about ~5 years ago.
 
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@jpod

If I remember correctly, the holy grail of Physics is the Theory of Everything which is to combine the four fundamental forces of nature, the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and mavity, I think mavity is the least well known. Look up Superstring theory.

They are searching for mathematical proof of design of nature to try and prove/disprove the existence of a creator. Determinism Vs randomness basically. Einstein initially proposed the hidden variable theory whereby if you knew enough variables about an object, possibly infinate variables, then you could calculate certain properties of it such as its speed and position etc. Like if you were to throw a coin in the air and knew every variable assosiated with the conditions of the throw. This was mathematically disproved however and hence came quantum mechanics, which can be mind boggling stuff. And to think most of this started with Newton dropping an apple. All crazy.

As for classical mechanics(Newton) Vs quantum mechanics(Einstein et all) they both seem to somewhat mysteriously coexist when calculating the position or speed of an object as it passes through mavity, classical generally gives an approximation and quantum a more accurate measurement. Quantum generally deals with atoms and sub atomic particles.
 
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