Really no point in worrying about what he got wrong. They were just ideas. The ones that are wrong get rejected and forgotten, just as they should be.

What he did very well was make actual predictions that could conceivably be tested in the future. Even if they turn out to be wrong or incomplete, he contributed.

Science marches on.

Einstein, he was no Eisenstein

Ein Stein = a stone

He was a cornerstone of science

Not sure that is true. Einstein refused to send articles to Physical Review after receiving questions during peer review.

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...1063/1.2117822
I'm not an expert on gravitational waves, but was surprised at the short duration of the signal. I guess that speaks to the sensitivity of the detector, but pretty amazing that when two black holes collide, we can only observe a signal for 1/10 of a second.

I was being sarcastic. Science marches on one death at a time.

That is why the researchers are necessary: Doesn't matter how good your math, logical consistency and equations fit together if your model doesn't accurately describe reality.

Think about this.

Two black holes collide and the collision lasts only 1/10 of a second. Talk about a quickie! And black hole collisions aren't just your ordinary copulation. It's not like black holes are everywhere because if they were, the stars in the sky wouldn't exist, and hey, you probably wouldn't either. You'd be in a black hole.

But somehow, miraculously, this probably once in a million year event (or less, much, much less since black holes aren't real) was recorded for Ligo to detect. Miraculous coincidence isn't it? A guy buying a camera in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and then just randomly pointing and shooting had a better chance of filming who shot Kennedy, but hey, this is science. Or rather, this is math, because, real science deals with reality, which is real, not an abstract. When physics starts to understand that the root of the word is knowledge of nature, and not math, then we can move forward. Until then, we'll be left with nonsense like this

Collisions like that from binary compact systems happen basically all the time in an observable universe that has say 10^22 stars. Most pairs are simple stars or less often 1 star and 1 neutron star or 1 black hole and 1 star or very rarely 2 neutron stars or even more rarely a neutron star and a black hole or further more rarely than all 2 black holes even. Still moreover the rarity if there is 1 in a billion systems that is like that (ie only a few in a typical galaxy) you still have billions of them across the visible universe in all those billions of galaxies added up. So if they last a few hundred million years before the end phase of in-spiral, you will be getting a few per year that are at that very end (ie with days, weeks, months left) if you have billions candidates to begin with. So if you picked a random one yes its would be extremely unlikely to see it end in our lifetimes. It would probably still have millions of years of life ahead of it before that fateful collision. But we have so many to work with in principle that you can have all kinds of ages and some even imminent without of course knowing which (we cant "see" them yet ie detect them differently but they are there).

In some well known pulsar (neutron stars) binary systems such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J0737-3039 or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulse%...3Taylor_binary the lifetime can be estimated and known in advance and typically is in the millions or hundred of millions of years until they collide but there are so many we dont know. We would be extremely lucky if we ever find one that is within years of the end and can be observed as it happens i mean anticipating it completely. That is probably very hard to happen though since as i said they are very rare and most of them will be very distant to know ahead of time. Maybe in a few decades we would have had big enough databases for such possibility to be less unlikely and end up having one that we can observe its entire final few days and hours and then even detect the waves at the right moment as expected. That would be something!

So when i say they happen all the time i mean say at some rate of eg 10-20 per year without knowing them. Yes that particular one has astronomically ridiculous chance to be detected because it has to happen at the right time there for mankind here to have evolved and developed General Relativity and then built the detector etc. That is coincidence but if that was not the one observed it would be another a few days or weeks or months later so we would be talking then about the first detection of a different system but similarly big instead of in September 2015 that it was detected. So there is nothing really miraculous about it, some had to be the first anyway. The observation of that one is lucky but the observation of any one in general is well... inevitable. They will be presenting new events eventually soon enough that happened after September and they are already registered likely. Processing of the signals (that they have continuously to record) takes substantial effort in general to clean up and read them properly when something is more promising that usual "noise"/background.

not to be rude....but your post shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of the shear size and scale of our observable universe. do some reading about the number of galaxies and things will start to make sense....


Masque-

interesting noob question for you....do we observe a redshift affect in gravitational waves?

I dont know about observing any time soon because there are competing effects since the wave is affected by the expansion of the universe in multiple ways so it would take some cleaning up in the signals to see such details and get any information from them (like what happens with the electromagnetic waves) vs what you would expect i mean if you were at the system the merger is happening nearby and recording the gravitational waves there. The theory that describes the evolution/creation of the wave is common to all frames obviously but in one frame you have relative motion too/expansion of the universe over very large distances etc so comparing the profiles of what you would expect if you were there nearby vs what you see here may reveal through this effect additional information (once the theory of the generation of the waves from the mergers is established and compares well with the simulations to perfect the numerical analysis involved in such hard to explicitly solve problems. Such theory was already used to decode this was from a black hole merger and estimate masses etc anyway. But it may need to be further refined to detect these other details too given how chaotic the system is at the last moment of in-spiral and merger).

Gravitational waves (and the metric solutions anyway) are affected like other waves (periodic phenomena etc) from such relative motion/expansion of spacetime (or boosts) and i imagine further the collisions that creates them is very violent and asymmetrical often and it may be possible in parts/segments of the wave recorded to see the details in the signal somehow on top of the fact the galaxy this is happening is also moving away, as the 2 holes move very close to the speed of light in varying directions at the last milliseconds before merging. You can imagine how complicated the mixing of all these competing phenomena can get but i imagine if a good theory that simulates them exists it may be possible to compare eventually.

You also have the same effect in primordial gravitational waves ie from the beginning of the universe (so possible ways to check inflation etc)

See these papers that if you try the edit-find option (eg for redshift) you will see them talk (at multiple points/instances) also about red-shifts of gravitational waves other than the usual electromagnetic waves redshift. (not the same as gravitational redshift though which is something else https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_redshift)

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.0667v3.pdf
(Gravitational Waves: Sources, Detectors and Searches)

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.2504v1.pdf
(Primordial Gravitational Waves and Cosmology)

just wanted to say thanks for the response....it is really incredible and mind blowing to think about all the variables in play when 2 blackholes are spiraling inwards at relativistic speeds.

but you did seem to answer my question...whether we can actually observe and isolate a doppler like affect with gravitational waves is a another can of worms.

Through emails from BruceZ today about these news

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...m_medium=email

"NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope might have detected a burst from the same merging black holes that emitted the gravitational waves LIGO detected. Or not."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_...pace_Telescope

i became aware of that work next that may be of potential interest to Physics in general due to a rather hard to fit current models dual observation and other potential consequences (the time difference between signals may be important);


http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03920

"Fermi GBM Observations of LIGO Gravitational Wave event GW150914"


"With an instantaneous view of 70% of the sky, the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) is an excellent partner in the search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave (GW) events. GBM observations at the time of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)event GW150914 reveal the presence of a weak transient source above 50 keV, 0.4 s after the GW event was detected, with a false alarm probability of 0.0022. This weak transient lasting 1 s does not appear connected with other previously known astrophysical, solar, terrestrial, or magnetospheric activity. Its localization is ill-constrained but consistent with the direction of GW150914. The duration and spectrum of the transient event suggest it is a weak short Gamma-Ray Burst arriving at a large angle to the direction in which Fermi was pointing, where the GBM detector response is not optimal. If the GBM transient is associated with GW150914, this electromagnetic signal from a stellar mass black hole binary merger is unexpected. From our measurement of the fluence seen by GBM, we calculate a luminosity in hard X-ray emission between 1 keV and 10 MeV of 1.8+1.5−1.0×1049 erg s−1. The observation by Fermi GBM encompasses 75% of the probability map associated with the LIGO GW event localization at the time the GW event was detected. Assuming the two events have a common origin, the combined LIGO and GBM observations can reduce the 90% confidence interval on sky location from 601 to 199 square degrees. Future joint observations of GW events by LIGO/Virgo and Fermi GBM could reveal whether the weak transient reported here is a plausible counterpart to the GW event GW150914 or a chance coincidence, and will further probe the connection between compact binary mergers and short Gamma-Ray Bursts. "

That estimated energy observed in the form of hard X-rays from 1 keV to 10 MeV (over all directions imagined) represents only a very small fraction of energy released compared to that of the gravitational waves. It is actually only 1/200000 the solar mass (still a huge energy of course and the exact size of it may matter for consistency with the gravitational wave signal to eliminate coincidence) but this is order 1 mil times less than the gravitational energy output (over 3 solar masses).

The problem is that it is inconsistent with the picture of 2 (order 30 solar masses each) black holes merging (as currently imagined) with nothing else around and that other compact objects merging that would give x-rays probably wouldnt behave that way either in terms of the x-rays or the gravitational wave profiles. (neutron stars cannot be that large for example and other cases like BH colliding with star or 2 stars would probably have different x rays profile as well.)

So its either a rare coincidence or it means something that may require better scrutiny. The actual time difference between the 2 signals (0.4 sec ?) may prove important to further eliminate a coincidence or fit the distance of the assumed merger from our solar system (i think order 1.3 bil light years).

The exact time difference deserves a very careful determination (keep in mind the spaceship is in orbit and potentially then far from detectors to deserve a correction-adjustment) may have cosmological connections (or offer consistency arguments) that relate to the expansion of the universe or the fact that the photons have to travel on the perturbed spacetime of the leading gravitational wave and so possibly travel a slightly larger effective distance (even if slightly, although a lot less slightly initially near the merger when they are near simultaneous as signals, assuming they were produced both at the moment of the inspiral merger).

LIGO Does It Again: A Second Robust Binary Black Hole Coalescence Observed

News Release • June 15, 2016


https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160615

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/system/...pdf?1466010864

"On December 26, 2015 at 03:38:53 UTC, scientists observed gravitational waves-ripples in the fabric of spacetime for the second time. The gravitational waves were detected by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory LIGO detectors, located in Livingston,Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, USA.

"It is very significant that these black holes were much less massive than those observed in the first detection", says Gabriela Gonzalez, LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) spokesperson and professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University. “Because of their lighter masses compared to the first detection, they spent more time—about one second—in the sensitive band of the detectors. It is a promising start to mapping the populations of black holes in our universe.” During the merger, which occurred approximately 1.4 billion years ago, a quantity of energy roughly equivalent to the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves. The detected signal comes from the last 27 orbits of the black holes before their merger. Based on the arrival time of the signals—with the Livingston detector measuring the waves 1.1 milliseconds before the Hanford detector—the position of the source in the sky can be roughly determined."


"The gravitational wave arrived at the two detectors at almost the same time, indicating that the source was located somewhere in a ring of sky about midway between the two detectors. Knowing our detector sensitivity pattern, we can add that it was a bit more likely overhead or underfoot instead of to the West or the East. With only two detectors, however, we can't narrow it down much more than that. This differs from LIGO's first detected signal (GW150914, from 14 September 2015), which came from the 'southeast', hitting Louisiana's detector before Washington's.
The two merging black holes in the Boxing Day event were less massive (14 and 8 times the mass of our sun) than those observed in the first detection GW150914 (36 and 29 times the mass of our sun). While this made the signal weaker than GW150914, when these lighter black holes merged, their signal shifted into higher frequencies bringing it into LIGO’s sensitive band earlier in the merger than we observed in the September event. This allowed us to observe more orbits than the first detection–some 27 orbits over about one second (this compares with just two tenths of a second of observation in the first detection). Combined, these two factors (smaller masses and more observed orbits) were the keys to enabling LIGO to detect a weaker signal. They also allowed us to make more precise comparisons with General Relativity. Spoiler: the signal agrees, again, perfectly with Einstein’s theory.
Last but not least, the Boxing Day event revealed that one of the initial black holes was spinning like a top! – and this is a first for LIGO to be able to state this with confidence. A spinning black hole suggests that this object has a different history –- e.g. maybe it 'sucked in' mass from a companion star before or after collapsing from a star to form a black hole, getting spun-up in the process.

With these two confirmed detections, along with a third likely detection made in October 2015 (believed also to be caused by a pair of merging black holes--see our paper draft on Black Hole Binaries in O1 for more information) we can now start to estimate the rate of black hole coalescences in the Universe based not on theory, but on real observations. Of course with just a few signals, our estimate has big uncertainties, but our best right now is somewhere between 9 and 240 binary black hole coalescences per cubic Gigaparsec per year, or about one every 10 years in a volume a trillion times the volume of the Milky Way galaxy! Happily, in its first few months of operation, LIGO’s advanced detectors were sensitive enough to probe deeply enough into space to see about one event every two months."

Relevant papers

Binary Black Hole Mergers in the first Advanced LIGO Observing Run

https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0124/P16...015/bbh-o1.pdf



GW151226: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a 22-Solar-Mass Binary
Black Hole Coalescence

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1606/1606.04855.pdf

yooper, your post lead me to a highly unexpected series of questions and findings.

1. first, though, let's start with the most general one: what is the point of your post? let's assume that you're right and a) black holes aren't real, and b) nothing was really detected. so what are you proposing as the counter theory? what are you trying to say?

2. after reading your post, i became curious as to what type of poster you are in terms of what other science/philosophy type stuff you may be participating in. and THAT is where this got interesting. i simply put "yooper" into the "Search" field above and it seems like this gravitational wave thread is the ONLY thread of this type that you've posted in.

now, of course, this doesn't indicate what you like to read and it's certainly possible (and actually now it's highly likely) that you read tons of stuff from MSP along w/ a variety of other forums on whatever you are interested in. so i copy/pasted the list of threads you've posted in:

so by FAR you love sports. so my next question is how in the world did you end up here in this forum and this thread?

3. in response to this specifically:

i'd counter that, first, actually, this is statistics (what you were talking about in terms of the likelihood of observing x over y time frame). i'd also point out that statistics and mathematics help provide a great deal of information and insight regarding the knowledge of nature. indeed, without these fields, we wouldn't have the understanding we do regarding how the atomic and subatomic worlds actually work (it's extremely counterintuitive and difficult to grasp, which makes us even more heavily reliant on maths since that is the only way to get a relatively objective picture of what's going on).

yes ofc maths has its faults (typically oversimplification in the face of an overwhelmingly large number of variables and outcome parameters), but we've learned (at least i think) pretty darn well how to weigh that trade off and use this stuff as correctly as possible.

anyways, definitely very curious as to your thoughts!