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An 'unknown' burst of gravitational waves just lit up Earth's detectors:
Earth's gravitational wave observatories -- which hunt for ripples in the fabric of space-time -- just picked up something weird. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo detectors recorded an unknown or unanticipated "burst" of gravitational waves on Jan. 14.
The gravitational waves we've detected so far usually relate to extreme cosmic events, like two black holes colliding or neutron stars finally merging after being caught in a death spiral. Burst gravitational waves have not been detected before and scientists hypothesize they may be linked to phenomena such as supernova or gamma ray bursts, producing a tiny "pop" when detected by the observatories.
This unanticipated burst has been dubbed, for now, S200114f, and was detected by the software that helped confirm the first detection of gravitational waves.
[...] Astronomers have already swung their telescopes to the interesting portion of the sky, listening in across different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum for a whisper of what might have occurred.
Previously:
LIGO Observes Lower Mass Black Hole Collision
First Joint Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO and Virgo
LIGO May Have Detected Merging Neutron Stars for the First Time
GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2
Europe's "Virgo" Gravitational Wave Detector Suffers From "Microcracks"
LIGO Black Hole Echoes Hint at General-Relativity Breakdown
LIGO Data Probes Where General Relativity Might Break Down
Did the LIGO Gravitational Wave Detector Find Dark Matter?
Second Detection of Gravitational Waves Announced by LIGO
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:45AM (15 children)
Literally anything that shakes the earth a tiny amount.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:54AM (1 child)
Probably related to the very next SN article: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-philippine-volcano-spews-lava-half-mile.html [phys.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:05AM
Or this ongoing phenomenon: https://in-other-news.us/2020/01/11/worlds-tallest-geyser-breaks-eruption-record/ [in-other-news.us]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @03:22AM (12 children)
Anything on/in the Earth that shakes things up (volcano, earthquake, bomb, etc) is transmitted around at the speed of sound in rock (earth crust material). https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/PamelaSpiegel.shtml [hypertextbook.com]
Something over 2 minutes to travel 1000 Km.
What LIGO detected must be external to the Earth, since it shook both detectors (or are there 3 now) nearly simultaneously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:19AM (5 children)
Wat?
If i hit a drum two people on other sides of the room equidistant from me will hear it near simultaneously. The sound does not need to travel sequentially from one site to the next. It travels in parallel from its origin outward. Do you agree?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:25AM (4 children)
But there are three detectors now, and no point equidistant between them...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:28AM (3 children)
hit send too soon, Here's the 3rd detector:
http://www.virgo-gw.eu/ [virgo-gw.eu] it's in Italy, the two LIGO installations are in USA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:53AM (2 children)
Taal Volcano, Philippines: 14°0′36″N 120°59′51″E
Pisa, Italy: 43.6313°N 10.5045°E
Hanford, USA: 46°27′18.52″N 119°24′27.56″W
Livingston, USA: 30°33′46.42″N 90°46′27.27″W
Taal -> Virgo = 10, 503 km
Taal -> Hanford = 10,989 km
Taal -> Livingston = 13,996 km
I just used this as an example but they are very close to equidistant. At 7 km/s the delay would be 5-6 min. But we see that is just an average, in realty the speed depends upon the rock type. It can vary from 1.8 km/s to 7.3 km/s, a factor of 4.5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-wave [wikipedia.org]
But to repeat, I am in no way attached to this Philippines example. I don't see why some other event couldn't occur deep in the earth and trigger a volcano though. That event could also be equidistant (in terms of travel time).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:58PM (1 child)
Um... P waves are a direct path. And are followed by S waves that travel at a different velocity so each such wave pair gives a seismometer an estimated distance to the origin.
Armchair physics by AC's often boils down to someone thinking their first moment considering a problem is wiser than a symposium of scientists that have studied it for decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:27PM
Nothing stops multiple tremors happening all over the globe to create false positives, you don't need a single event hitting all three (that would actually be easily thrown out as it would get weaker with distance travelled), multiple events could easily align to hit all three, like 99% of their work is discarding false positives
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:50AM (5 children)
Unless the event is exactly equidistant from the two detectors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:36AM (4 children)
Apparently in China they are using "gravitational waves" to predict earthquakes: https://www.certifiedchinesetranslation.com/earthquake/index.html [certifiedchinesetranslation.com]
(Score: 2) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @10:03PM (3 children)
IANAE but that reads like lolwut city. Weatherwars-grade leaps of conclusions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @11:00PM (2 children)
So you don't trust the experts with a track history of predicted earthquakes then? Just spewing forth your uneducated opinion for us to enjoy. Thank you for almost instantaneously contradicting your post above.
(Score: 2) by D2 on Friday January 17 2020, @07:37AM (1 child)
I don't see predictions. By all means, link to a valid set of predictions for earthquakes.
I also see lots of hypotheses. I also see silly stuff, like declaring human error in time measurements (when such data is recorded in a way that doesn't involve human error, and can be reexamined). Or the hypothesis that cosmic gamma rays from gravitational collapses millions of light years away cause earthquakes, rather than plate tectonics. Lots of "if..." and "assuming..."
Most to the point, googling shows not much since 2016. The LIGO and sibling sensors are picking up bursts, happening simultaneously enough to deny physical wave dynamics as a cause.
And there's no new discussion of this idea tied to the above activity. If prediction were effective, each detection would be coalescing and reinforcing this idea. You'd post it here, naturally. Silence, to me, means the idea isn't succeeding.
And that's the glory of the scientific method... if a hypothesis works, it builds our trust. No faith, no woo-woo. Just results.
So long, troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @04:33PM
So you still deny that there are geological events that can happen to influence all sites at about the same time? Sorry, but that is just dumb. It goes against all common sense.
Whether such events are common enough to explain what it setting off the detectors is another matter (and I bet no one knows), but to deny it can happen at all... No. I reject your assumption wholeheartedly.