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posted by martyb on Sunday June 25 2017, @04:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the Immeasurably?-ISWYDT! dept.

The European Space Agency has just given the green light to the LISA mission to detect gravitational waves.

This will see lasers bounced between three identical satellites separated by 2.5 million km.

By looking for tiny perturbations in these light beams, the trio hope to catch the warping of space-time that is generated by cataclysmic events such as the merger of gargantuan black holes.

Ground-based laboratories in the US have recently begun detecting gravitational waves from coalescing objects that are 20-30 times the mass of our Sun.

But by sending an observatory into space, scientists would expect to discover sources that are millions of times bigger still, and to sense their activity all the way out to the edge of the observable Universe.

It should immeasurably advance our understanding of gravity and how it works; and perhaps even highlight some chinks in Einstein's so-far flawless equations.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @08:06PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @08:06PM (#530940)

    if galaxies are unstable doesnt it seem reasonable that there would be at least some galaxy-scale, observable objects that might hint at such galactic instability besides galaxy mergers or intersections?

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @12:28PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 26 2017, @12:28PM (#531271)

    Agreed that's pretty much "all of physics" response to the astronomers when the astronomers are all unhappy about their rotating galaxy models not being stable or not working. Either their observations are wrong, or are not viewing the funky stuff that must exist, or their mathematical models are faulty in some way.

    Note that the astronomers are not annoyed with gravitational theory as relates to planetary and stellar orbits, the physics of stars, planet and solar system formation, black holes and stuff, thats all good. Its just rotating galaxies that "don't work".

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @12:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @12:58PM (#531286)

      What evidence for GR is there that doesn't come from astronomers?