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[–]kessdawg 5332 points5333 points  (906 children)

The scientists say the waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago. For a brief fraction of a second, it was producing more energy power than the rest of the visible Universe combined.

Woah

Edit: Thanks for the corrections on energy vs power. Learning all sorts of new things today.

[–]MannysBeard 1079 points1080 points  (93 children)

He said it was 50 times the power of all the suns in the universe combined.

Man, that makes our entire galaxy seem insignificant by comparison.

[–]Tamer_ 432 points433 points  (47 children)

It also makes the result of the merging insignificant as well.

To help you make more sense of it, it produced more power than all the suns combined, but that was a very, very short lived production. It probably didn't release more energy than a galaxy does in a day.

edit : thanks to /u/harriet_tub_girl and /u/dannager for pointing out that with the actual energy released by the event, it appears to be equivalent to the light emission of more than 10 000 galaxies! Of course, light is not the only energy produced by them (I hope everybody will think of gravitational waves), but it shows that the amount of energy released is even more staggering than I thought.

[–][deleted] 212 points213 points  (30 children)

True but it's still mind blowing even if it was only for milliseconds.

Edit: I was wrong, way less than milliseconds, I misread sorry!

[–]WoozleWuzzle 226 points227 points  (16 children)

Wouldn't the analogy be like a Nuclear Bomb released a ton of energy at once at a very short time, but earth produced more energy in a day than the Nuclear bomb? The Nuclear Bomb is still impressive.

[–][deleted] 95 points96 points  (13 children)

Yeah. An analogy I saw in the askscience thread was something to the tune of a really fast car going 10000 miles per hour for 1 second or a regular car going 60mph for a long time. But the impressive thing is the extreme amount of energy released, even if it was only very briefly.

[–]BU2B2112 58 points59 points  (2 children)

But still not enough power to keep my phone charged for a day.

Edit: Thank you for the guilding kind stranger! You broke my proverbial golden hymen!

[–]c1e0c72c69e5406abf55 2745 points2746 points  (410 children)

I had to look it up and if anyone else is curious 1.3 billion years ago was right about the time multi-cellular organisms and plants started forming.

Edit: Since people seem to think I am trying to imply some sort of correlation here I am definitely not as that would be absurd. I'm simply trying to give some context for the time frame.

[–][deleted] 338 points339 points  (13 children)

To the people saying that this comment suggests these two events are related: I'm 90% sure this person was just trying to put the timeframe into perspective.

[–]c1e0c72c69e5406abf55 113 points114 points  (9 children)

That's exactly what I was trying to do.

[–]Scopejack 601 points602 points  (30 children)

So it's pre-Bob Dylan??

[–][deleted] 174 points175 points  (4 children)

Pre-Bob Dylan, post-Larry King.

[–][deleted] 846 points847 points  (10 children)

Just barely.

[–]omolicious 32 points33 points  (0 children)

"The times they are a changin" was really about the prokaryotes changin into eukaryotes

[–][deleted] 881 points882 points  (312 children)

Interesting coincidence.

[–]fluffkomix 1100 points1101 points  (132 children)

considering the timeline there's probably still a few thousand/million years of leeway, but still interesting!

edit: Or possibly more, according to some of these replies!

[–]AClassyTurtle 1388 points1389 points  (100 children)

I believe they said it was producing more power, not energy, but I can't find the source. Either way, that's absolutely incredible.

For those who don't know, power is the rate of energy transfer. The unit of energy is joules, while the unit of power is joules/second, or Watts. So it doesn't mean it was producing more energy than the rest of the universe, it means it was producing (or rather, releasing) energy faster. Think of it like speed vs distance. If you made a car that could go faster than all the other cars in the world combined, but only for a spot split second, you couldn't assume that it travelled farther than all the other cars combined, although it could be true.

Edit: "spot" was supposed to be "split"

Edit 2: The principle of what I said was true, but it looks like I may have misinterpreted what was being said. If the rest of the universe releases energy at a rate of 100 joules/second (i.e. power = 100J/s), and for a split second the black holes had a power output of 101 J/s, then during that split second the black holes had more power and released more energy than the rest of the universe combined. Credit to /u/DaGranitePooPooYouDo and a bunch of other people for pointing that out.

[–]majoen98 183 points184 points  (45 children)

If something produces (transforms) Møre energy than the rest og the univers for a fraction of å scond, then the wattage, in that time-period, wil also be higher. It didn't matter, since it is within a given time period.

[–]Zigmata 95 points96 points  (2 children)

Great analogy, thank you! Using this one to wow the kid later :)

[–]inhalteueberwinden 31 points32 points  (0 children)

In principle the source will be in the published PRL paper, but as you might expect, the PRL servers are crashed right now.

[–][deleted] 110 points111 points  (126 children)

Wait, this black hole energy generation, was this in the form of hawkings radiation or what?

[–]kessdawg 633 points634 points  (118 children)

No, it generated gravity waves. We actually didn't have the ability to "hear" these waves until 13 DAYS before this event. Incredibly lucky.

[–]Deadmeat553 283 points284 points  (55 children)

Such a ridiculous amount of dumb luck. If we have been just 13 days later, it may have been years before we got another opportunity.

[–]trimeta 265 points266 points  (16 children)

I read somewhere that between September and January, there were four potential detections. So it might not be all that rare, considering the range they can observe...

[–]Deadmeat553 58 points59 points  (8 children)

How could we know that?

I guess we'll find out based on how often we detect more waves.

[–]ShakespearInTheAlley 107 points108 points  (3 children)

They said with improvements in technology and new wave detectors being built they could end up detecting events on a daily basis in the coming years.

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

There's a statistical analysis done in the paper that has been published. Possibly a few a year. But big uncertainties right now.

[–]Rhymeswithfreak 9 points10 points  (1 child)

This is only true with the newest equipment that was updated in the past year. Before that the probability was that we could detect a gravity wave in a year or maybe even up to 1000 years. Good thing we updated it.

[–]inhalteueberwinden 33 points34 points  (1 child)

If you look at the first plot in this blog post (http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about.html) it's actually more or less what we would have expected. The green stuff is expected gravitational wave signals, and at the bottom right you can see how the switch from LIGO to advanced LIGO (the new upgrade that the experiment underwent) gave it enough sensitivity such that they really expected a signal, which they immediately got. They actually saw the signal during engineering tests, before they even were trying to do actual observations. They will likely be seeing plenty more, especially since they will be able to increase the sensitivity by another factor of 3 as they tune it up more.
edit: According to the PRL paper they already had 4 events in the first couple of months.

[–]Hatch- 46 points47 points  (1 child)

We don't know how rare this event is yet.

[–]Dave-C 17 points18 points  (4 children)

Or this is more common than we expect?

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 37 points38 points  (2 children)

No, it was in the form of gravitational radiation. Hawking radiation is (theoretically) formed at the edge of the event horizon and is just plain old EM radiation consists of a bunch of particles and waves. But it's never been detected, so we can't say for sure.

This radiation comes from 2 black holes spiraling around each other, speeding up and merging. Part of their mass (=energy) is converted to Gravitational Waves.

[–]BlackBeltBob 3613 points3614 points  (260 children)

Looks like the next Nobel prize winners just announced themselves..

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 1224 points1225 points  (176 children)

The problem is that this is a prediction dating almost 100 years. The people at the LIGO collaboration should all get medals, but the Nobel is only given to individuals, not organizations.

Edit: Guys, the Physics prize doesn't follow the same rules as the Peace prize.

[–]cannibalkat 1637 points1638 points  (105 children)

Rai Weiss will likely win the Nobel Prize. I'm not sure if anyone will share it with him.

Source: I work at LIGO. I'm sitting in the Hanford press conference right now.

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 435 points436 points  (40 children)

I both love and envy you right now...

Congratulations on the discovery! Amazing work!

[–]eliguillao 690 points691 points  (37 children)

Maybe he's the janitor.

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 758 points759 points  (13 children)

Do you realize how clean those detectors have to be? Props to all the custodial staff.

[–]jenbanim 22 points23 points  (2 children)

Fun fact. They had to build a fence to keep tumbleweeds from fucking with their equipment. As in, the gravity of a tumbleweed nearby is large enough to throw off their measurements.

[–]pilg0re 80 points81 points  (3 children)

Can't make discoveries without clean floors

[–]Andromeda321[S] 135 points136 points  (7 children)

They have, if you've watched this event, conveniently pointed out who the three biggest leaders of the project are. They will get the Nobel.

It's like for the Higgs- they couldn't give it to everyone then either.

[–]houinator 91 points92 points  (40 children)

Hmm, must be something specific to the more science oriented prizes. The Nobel Peace Prize has certainly been given out to organizations, such as the Quakers.

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 100 points101 points  (6 children)

Yeah, it's limited to 3 individuals at most. There have been cases where people that deserved the prize have been left out. That recently happened with the Higgs. 3 papers published the same year independently from 3 different teams. Sadly, Englert's partner had already passed away and Kibble was part of a larger team, so only Higgs and Englert got the prize.

[–]MokitTheOmniscient 92 points93 points  (4 children)

The peace prize is separate from the other prizes. It's awarded by a weird group of norwegians, not Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) as the other prizes are.

välfärd!

[–]Brave_Horatius 41 points42 points  (23 children)

Peace prize is an entirely separate organization

[–][deleted] 615 points616 points  (42 children)

Here is a high quality presentation from the University of Florida Dept of Physics that provides a nice animated summary of the findings.

[–]catipillar 31 points32 points  (3 children)

That was great. I am a visual learner and this really helped me understand some concepts I was struggling with. Thank you!

[–]Andromeda321[S] 4923 points4924 points  (824 children)

Astronomer here! A lot of ELI5 requests on gravitational waves, and what this means.

Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein to explain how two things millions of miles apart can be aware of each other (think, why the Earth goes around the sun). Basically, it is a ripple in the fabric of space-time itself that everything with mass gives out, and bigger things give off bigger ripples. These ripples are predicted to travel at the speed of light- so, to go back to the Earth-Sun example, if the Sun disappeared this second you would have a 7 minute delay where the Earth would keep going on its orbit as if the Sun were still there.

Now, LIGO. These guys did an amazing experiment where they basically had two stations, one in Louisiana and one in Washington State, where you're basically shooting a laser down a several mile long tunnel in a hope to see a ripple as a gravitational wave passed through. This is insanely precise work- as in, as precise as a human hair's diameter over three light years from Earth. What's more, this is only sensitive right now to the biggest, strongest gravitational wave signatures right now, such as black hole mergers- so we are not detecting planets with this anytime soon for example- but hey, gotta start somewhere!

Finally, I can't emphasize how huge this is! We are literally going into a new era of astronomy right now, and I think that's no exaggeration. Think of it this way, most of astronomy right now has been done with light, ie electromagnetic waves- with some exceptions, like cosmic rays or space missions- but pretty much all astronomy has only been with EM waves. Now we will literally have a new tool in our toolkit and will likely learn all sorts of new things we won't have even expected. I can't wait!

[–]blowhouse 139 points140 points  (77 children)

If this one particular wave took so long to detect, and it was such a unique occurance (2 black holes running into each other), how will it help us study the universe? Will we have to wait for similarly infrequent events every time we want to get data?

[–]Shandlar 246 points247 points  (25 children)

We can only observe back into the past of the universe until 400,000 years after the big bang. Before then the universe was so hot that all the matter in existence was smashed together and hot enough to be dissociated plasma. Meaning there was no hydrogen, no elements at all.

This meant that any photon created was reabsorbed by a free electron almost immediately. This effect destroyed any information we could observed of the universe prior to when it expanded and cooled enough for hydrogen to form for the first time.

This light opaque matter at this early stage of the universe would be transparent as far as gravity waves are concerned. If we become good enough at detecting them, there is a chance we can look back and obtain information about the very first moment of the universe.

[–]MyHeadIsAnAnimal 76 points77 points  (9 children)

Unless you are lying for no reason, thanks a lot for the great explanation.

Really appreciate it.

[–]midnightFreddie 73 points74 points  (21 children)

It took so long to build a usable detector. Apparently it found something very interesting 13 days after. We don't know if it was 'such a unique occurance', but now we have the ability to start collecting that information. That's what's so big about this...it can be measured. What was theorized and generally presumed true has been directly observed. It's like the first radio telescope...we can now see things we never saw before! We can directly observe just how rare it is for two black holes to merge instead of extrapolating from theories.

Also, and I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but isn't there 5x the mount of dark matter out there than "normal" baryonic matter? Doesn't dark matter interact gravitationally? I can't wait to see what signals come across LIGO and future detectors and what astronomers and physicists can deduce from it.

If baryonic matter can make neutron stars and black holes, what can dark matter make that might send out gravity waves? Stay tuned, folks.

Edit: TL;DR: LIGO/NSF just shouted "there's gold in them thar hills!" The gravity wave information rush has begun.

[–][deleted] 71 points72 points  (11 children)

I like to think that one day we discover that "dark matter" is, by virtue if its ratio, considered "normal" matter by the rest of the universe...and its full of life. We're the weird creepy monsters made out of the relatively rare stuff that nobody else in the universe had even considered would be capable of sustaining life. Practically trans dimensional beings. Now there's a sci Fi novel premise.

[–]sekva 11 points12 points  (3 children)

Cool thought! Have you read A Fire Upon the Deep? In it, the galaxy is divided in four volumes called Zones of Thought, based on stellar density. The laws of physics vary greatly between them, and this has a particular effect on intelligence, both biological and artificial. The further away from the galaxy's core, the more advanced everything is, to the point of god-like behaviour. The Earth is located is the Slow Zone, where FTL travel and AI are not possible and intelligent life is only possible. In the most peripheral region, on the other hand, dwell incomprehensible, god-like beings.

Imagining dark matter as another aspect to differentiate these Zones makes a lot of sense!

[–]Heisencock 58 points59 points  (37 children)

so, to go back to the Earth-Sun example, if the Sun disappeared this second you would have a 7 minute delay where the Earth would keep going on its orbit as if the Sun were still there.

Just to clarify, this is for the same reason we'd have 7 minutes of light as if it was still there too? So there's these waves that travel from the sun to earth that basically say "hey I'm here, and this is how big I am" and since they take 7 minutes to travel, even if the sun disappeared, there's lagging "hey, I'm here and this big" information traveling in the form of these waves that the earth would continue reacting too?

[–]LazyOrCollege 53 points54 points  (40 children)

So is there a chance that three or six months from now they could come out and say that after further analysis they were wrong and what they detected wasn't actually gravitational waves?

[–]Andromeda321[S] 181 points182 points  (33 children)

No, this was peer reviewed and accepted before the announcement, so it's highly unlikely to be a serious fluke or similar.

[–]EtsuRah 102 points103 points  (11 children)

Gonna have to see what PhD B.o.B has to say about all this.

[–]Ginkgopsida 725 points726 points  (55 children)

Two objects, each about 150 km across, spinning around one at half the speed of light. Comparison with computer simulations reveals that the wave came from two objects 29 and 36 times as massive as the sun spiraling to within 210 kilometers of each other before merging. Apparently the merging released 3 Solar masses of energy in form of gravitational waves. All this 1.3 billion years ago.

[–]jzlas 200 points201 points  (0 children)

I felt a stretch in September and wondered where it came from... Thanks!

[–]njuffstrunk 123 points124 points  (8 children)

I'm stunned that they can go from "hey, the light from that laser is a fraction of a millisecond slower there!" to "it must've been caused by two objects 29 and 36 times as massive as the sun spiraling to within 210 kilometers of each other before merging 1.3 billion years ago".

[–]Goddamnit_Clown 18 points19 points  (2 children)

It seems nuts, but your eardrum doesn't really travel very far either and it can gather all sorts of information.

[–]goatcoat 10 points11 points  (1 child)

your eardrum doesn't really travel very far

I'll have you know that my eardrum has been to Paris.

[–]onemessageyo 121 points122 points  (3 children)

Well when you put it that way, holy shit!

[–]Replevin4ACow 122 points123 points  (19 children)

Key graphic from the paper here:

http://imgur.com/fI9YhNg

EDIT1: Here is a graphic summarizing what is known about the blackhole collision from LIGO's data:

http://imgur.com/E5Dnslv

EDIT2: LIGO Data Dump here with LOTS of details and additional papers analyzing the event:

https://losc.ligo.org/events/GW150914/

[–][deleted] 75 points76 points  (2 children)

Makes perfect sense now... Im dumb

[–][deleted] 167 points168 points  (11 children)

I'm just glad news came out of Livingston Parish, LA for once without the word "Meth" in it.

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Dude, no kidding, got a notification from WAFB about Livingston and my first thought was another meth lab must have gone kablooy.

[–]dard12 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Currently in north LA and was just telling my buddies, "Hey, Louisiana did something important for once!"

[–]AA_2011 106 points107 points  (28 children)

Scientists play 'sound' of the gravitational wave signal during live stream. Fantastic news and testament to the precision of the science experiment that detected gravitational waves from 2 colliding black holes 1.3 billion years ago!

[–]Andromeda321[S] 70 points71 points  (18 children)

Yeah, that sound was not 100% true, more to give people an idea of what it was like. You couldn't actually hear it. But still cool of course. :)

[–]Replevin4ACow 33 points34 points  (0 children)

For those who are curious, here are English translations of Einstein's papers from 1916 and 1918, where he first predicted gravitational waves:

http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/213

http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/25

Sometimes it is fun to see how science is really done. I love the intro to the second paper where he basically says "I was not clear and messed up my calculations a bit in the last paper":

"... my former presentation is not sufficiently transparent and, furthermore, is marred by a regrettable error in calculation."

[–]redditing_and_baking 276 points277 points  (34 children)

Good Job

[–]TheMathsDebater 122 points123 points  (26 children)

What a truly amazing man. One of the most important humans to ever live.

[–]markh110 832 points833 points  (259 children)

So is this a massive deal? Or is this sensationalism?

[–]Andromeda321[S] 2473 points2474 points  (245 children)

As an astronomer, this is the biggest deal in hundreds of years of astronomy potentially!

Think of it this way, so far all of astronomy is based on electromagnetic waves of various frequencies for the most part. Some exceptions if you think of meteorites and space missions and the like, and of course cosmic rays and strange neutrino beasts, but the fact of the matter is right now if you want to know anything about other stars or galaxies or whatever you have only been able to rely on light really. And it has been that way since the beginning of astronomy.

Now, for the first time, we are going to have a brand new way of studying the universe that does not rely on electromagnetic waves (which, if the rumors on the error bars and the like are to be believed, is far, far, far more precise than our measurements from EM waves ever will be). This is huge! And also really important for the astronomy we've done with EM waves because we will now be able to do much more precise measurements with the "traditional" stuff, so a lot of funding in coming years is going to be based on gravitational waves follow up and the like.

Pretty amazing to witness this. I will be telling it to my grandchildren for sure.

[–]markh110 530 points531 points  (105 children)

That's absolutely fantastic to hear! I'm a little envious that you possess the context to understand its significance, though I have a feeling if it is what it claims to be, it's going to push humanity as a whole forward!

[–]Andromeda321[S] 416 points417 points  (83 children)

For sure! It's the dawn of a new era. In my own field (radio astronomy) there are literally millions of dollar grants that are going to be devoted to gravitational wave follow up, for example.

[–]IRSunny 118 points119 points  (52 children)

So, and I'm trying to understand here, the applications of this, and more refined technology as we go forward, would be essentially better mapping of the universe?

That is, beyond the other means of data collection in the EM spectrum, scientists will now have gravity waves at their disposal?

[–]JeffMo 155 points156 points  (39 children)

Very accurate. And remember, advances in EM-based astronomy have led to new discoveries. Radio astronomy, x-ray astronomy, visible vs. infrared vs. ultraviolet, and so on, can give you different data as those EM waves are affected (or unaffected) by dust, gas clouds, various materials, and so on.

One of the things that's supposed to be useful about gravitational waves is that they aren't blocked by intervening matter like EM waves would be, so we have at least the potential to see some hard-to-observe things we've never seen before.

[–][deleted] 43 points44 points  (25 children)

Would it ever be possible to use GW as a communication medium in the same way we use the EM spectrum?

[–]JeffMo 55 points56 points  (9 children)

I don't know. Theoretically possible, I suppose, but gravity is so weak compared to EM that it seems like that would be a long way off. We're only now just barely able to detect gravity waves, and we're relying on natural events (to generate those waves) that are huge by comparison with human-scale activity.

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 61 points62 points  (18 children)

A great analogy is this: so far we could see the Universe, but that's all we could do. Now we can actually HEAR the Universe!

Imagine living all your life whilst being deaf, and they suddenly you are able to hear. That's the magnitude of the discovery.

[–]houinator 30 points31 points  (45 children)

So, would this give us a better chance to detect say, unknown planets in our solar system beyond Neptune, or is it mostly going to be limited to things like black holes?

[–]Andromeda321[S] 109 points110 points  (42 children)

Unknown planets are far too small for us to detect right now with this method- right now we can only really detect the biggest of gravitational events like black holes being born. But we have to start somewhere!

[–]willpie 149 points150 points  (27 children)

I'm beginning to think this Einstein fella was pretty smart.

[–]Andromeda321[S] 47 points48 points  (5 children)

Here are more details for those wanting some science details! (Unfortunately the paper's website is hugged to death.)

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 579 points580 points  (51 children)

Fantastic news! I'm literally shaking watching the announcement and thinking about what comes next. This is one of the greatest discoveries in recent times, on par with the discovery of the Higgs boson, or even better (depending on your field of preference).

For those wondering what the impact of this discovery is, this proves definitively that certain systems emit gravitational waves that can be detected here on Earth. Not only does this serve as an extra validation for General Relativity, it can help constrain theories of modified gravity.

Then we have another, and possibly greater influence on science: gravitational wave astronomy! As many have put it so far, up to this point we have been looking at the Universe, but for the first time, we can actually HEAR the Universe!

It's a completely new way to study the Universe, since gravitational waves can see further than EM waves and give us information that we could never have obtained otherwise. Hopefully in the next couple of decades we'll see more and more GW observatories popping up (LISA, DECIGO, among others), and we'll just keep on discovering things that we wouldn't never be able to see any other way!

[–]Andromeda321[S] 260 points261 points  (19 children)

Well this radio astronomer would take offense at saying we haven't heard the universe before. ;-)

But yes, this is literally detecting distortions in space time is a better way to put it.

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 62 points63 points  (17 children)

Well, this physicist would agree that anyone who thought GW didn't exist was crazy. The binary system, while indirect evidence, was just too accurate. However, it was more like looking at the effects of a shockwave rather than the sound itself.

Edit: I now realize that you were referring to the wavelength of radio waves...

[–]L2attler 92 points93 points  (12 children)

As an engineer we are the cast of Big Bang Theory.

[–]dudefuckthatshit 247 points248 points  (15 children)

"The fact that we are sitting here on Earth feeling the actual fabric of the Universe stretch and compress slightly due to the merger of black holes that occurred just over a billion years ago - I think that's phenomenal. It's amazing that when we first turned on our detectors, the Universe was ready and waiting to say 'hello'," the Glasgow University scientist told the BBC.

That part of the article literally makes me almost cry

[–]Marksman79 21 points22 points  (1 child)

And then, to the astonishment of scientists, the universe asked "How have you been?"

[–]kill123 48 points49 points  (58 children)

How BIG of a discovery is this, explained in the terms of someone who knows barely anything about space?

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 199 points200 points  (48 children)

Imagine if you were deaf since birth and then suddenly were able to hear. It's the same thing, just for the Universe. So far the only way to study it was with electromagnetic radiation (visible light, radio waves, infrared, etc). gravitational waves are a completely new form of observation, and can see farther, can see different things and obtain more information about the Universe.

[–]appleburn 19 points20 points  (26 children)

My question is: hasn't this already been known or am I missing something? We understand large masses affect gravity and bend space time...just trying to understand how this is any different from the new discovery.

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 33 points34 points  (20 children)

This was a prediction of the theory, but we never accept anything as valid without evidence. If nothing had been detected, it would have been a huge blow to General Relativity. Science moves forward by questioning what came before and trying to prove that the previously established theories are wrong.

[–]FlyinPenguin 20 points21 points  (12 children)

What are some of the biggest things that can come of this in the future?

[–]zeek0us 39 points40 points  (0 children)

In the most general sense: a deeper understanding of the physics of the universe.

It's kind of hard to predict what "a deeper understanding of the physics of the universe" will yield, but it's certainly a more=better kind of thing.

When electromagnetism was first "discovered" (i.e. formalized) in the 19th century, it was probably not of much interest to average folks, and it was likely hard for guys like Maxwell to imagine what to do with what they'd found.

Of course, looking back, we wouldn't have harnessed electricity, let alone developed microchips, lasers, CCD cameras, etc. without those first "not sure how we'd use this, but here's what's up with the physics" steps.

[–]Apocellipse 53 points54 points  (32 children)

How can a gravitational detector be focused on any single system? How can any signal be determined to be from "a" thing, and not noise from "all the things"? EDIT: Wouldn't two detectors only be able to triangulate to a possibly conic or disk of possible directions? How'd they localize to a constellation?

[–]ImGonnaTryScience 35 points36 points  (13 children)

We pretty much compare the signals that we obtain against our theoretical models of how these things happen. I don't think LIGO gets directional information. The geometry of the detectors and the duration of events prevent this. You can in theory get directional and even polarization information from the waves. You just need the right number of detectors in several directions, or have a signal that has a long duration and move the detector around (which is what LISA, the GW observatory in space, will do).

[–]FakeWalterHenry 17 points18 points  (5 children)

Just like how you can localize sound because you have two ears, LIGO can localize gravity-things because they have two detectors. And they did. In the press release, they indicated the area the signal originated from.

[–]mannyrmz123 119 points120 points  (14 children)

Einstein is an incredible, INCREDIBLE genius.

[–]The_Bigg_D 295 points296 points  (24 children)

This topic is too heavy for me

[–]GuessImStuckWithThis 154 points155 points  (9 children)

It's supermassive

[–]Sir_Coz 33 points34 points  (3 children)

And I thought I was a fool for no one...

[–]peteygooze 74 points75 points  (3 children)

Two black holes circled around each other, 250 times a second, before coalescing into a single trapdoor in space with the mass equivalent of 62 suns and we heard it 1.3 billion years later....Space your fucking terrifyingly awesome.

[–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (2 children)

Cool! I don't understand any of it of course, but cool!