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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the like-a-christmas-tree dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:47PM (4 children)

    by pe1rxq (844) on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:47PM (#944093) Homepage

    What is false about my statement?
    Ligo is in the US (actually two sites in the US) and Virgo is in Italy. Are those no longer on different continents?
    And if they both detect it the chances of both detecting a local earthquake are pretty low.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:57PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:57PM (#944097)

    What is a "local earthquake"?

    Hint: you are going to nuance yourself into oblivion. There are many geological events that can be felt all around the world at the sensitives of these interferometers.

    • (Score: 2) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:44PM (2 children)

      by D2 (5107) on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:44PM (#944254)

      Quakes are felt widely. But. Not. At. The. Same. instant. Compare Seismic (hundreds or thousands of meters per second) to light/gravity wave velocities of 300km/s = a six-figure difference (well, 60,000).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @10:56PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @10:56PM (#944291)

        But. Not. At. The. Same. instant.

        If you have enough quakes/etc (call them Earth Vibrations) eventually one will be close enough to equidistant from all the interferometers to hit at the same time. Especially if the trigger originates near the core. In China they have already started using "gravity wave" detection by the US/EU to predict earthquakes.