SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Deep space is not as silent as we have been led to believe. Every few minutes a pair of black holes smash into each other. These cataclysms release ripples in the fabric of spacetime known as gravitational waves. Now Monash University scientists have developed a way to listen in on these events. The gravitational waves from black hole mergers imprint a distinctive whooping sound in the data collected by gravitational-wave detectors. The new technique is expected to reveal the presence of thousands of previously hidden black holes by teasing out their faint whoops from a sea of static.
[...] "Measuring the gravitational-wave background will allow us to study populations of black holes at vast distances. Someday, the technique may enable us to see gravitational waves from the Big Bang, hidden behind gravitational waves from black holes and neutron stars," Dr Thrane said.
[...] Importantly the researchers will have access to a new $4 million supercomputer, launched last month (March) at the Swinburne University of Technology. The computer, called OzSTAR, will be used by scientists to look for gravitational waves in LIGO data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:13PM
... this is what a "whoop" sounds like. [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:39PM (4 children)
I expected more interesting fonts when I clicked through to the site. Please consider choosing a source with less mundane fonts next time. Simply using bold and italics with a sans-serif font is not sufficient for a modern website.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:43PM (3 children)
https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/the-background-hum-of-space-could-reveal-hidden-black-holes [monash.edu]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @02:58PM (2 children)
I'm not excited by those fonts either. If the only people discussing this are using such boring fonts it is probably not worth talking about.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 14 2018, @03:10PM (1 child)
What's going to get your rocks off? Google Noto? Monospace-Arik? Papyrus? Comic Sans? Webdings?
Actually, you can shut up about it now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @03:37PM
Anything google would be gnarly. Cosmic sans also sounds cool though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:42PM
We have the data already that this data analysis paper wants to analyze. Why don't they just apply their method and show us the results, instead of writing 18 pages about it?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 14 2018, @02:12PM
So, when an astronomer suffers from tinnitus, he writes a paper about black holes colliding.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 14 2018, @03:16PM
It's good news that gravitational waves could be used to find something other than a violent black hole or neutron star collision event.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-future-of-gravitational-wave-astronomy/ [scientificamerican.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 14 2018, @08:53PM (1 child)
One of the early gravitational wave detectors was built on the Caltech campus when I was there sometime around 1983. It was a laser interferometer with two evacuated beam tubes at right angles to each other. There was a mirror at one end of each tube, and a partially-reflecting mirror at at 45 degree angle at the junction of the two pipes.
What this kind of interferometer does is very precisely measure changes in the length of either tube. They can also be used to measure the speed of light in a gas by starting with a vacuum then slowly filling the tubes with the gas in question.
You can see that they must be very sensitive to vibration. Southern California is always having small earthquakes, there is lots of vehicle traffic there and even the vibrations from people walking nearby could be picked up.
A really good way to dampen vibration is to alternate layers of a resilient - springy - material with layers of dense material, whose inertia discourages it from moving.
There was once a Synchroton at Caltech - a type of particle accellerator. All over the Caltech campus back then were the lead bricks used to shield its radiation from getting out. These are commonly called "Synch Bricks".
Caltech's interferometer mirrors were mounted on top of alternating synch bricks and NerfMobiles.
I Am Absolutely Serious.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @03:05AM
I don't know that you can call something from 1983 that could never measure a real signal a "gravitational wave detector". More like an early prototype. Would you call something something a "microphone", even though it's only sensitive enough to pick up nuclear blasts?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @09:24PM
in space black holes can hear you scream.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @01:07AM
Have they tried looking in the federal budget?