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Gravitational Waves
Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity generated by the accelerated masses of an orbital binary system that propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1893 and then later by Henri Poincaré in 1905 as waves similar to electromagnetic waves but the gravitational equivalent. Gravitational waves were later predicted in 1916 by Albert Einstein on the basis of his general theory of relativity as ripples in spacetime. Later he refused to accept gravitational waves. Gravitational waves transport energy as gravitational radiation, a form of radiant energy similar to electromagnetic radiation. Newton's law of universal gravitation, part of classical mechanics, does not provide for their existence, since that law is predicated on the assumption that physical interactions propagate instantaneously (at infinite speed)showing one of the ways the methods of Newtonian physics are unable to explain ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warped Space And Time Around Colliding Black Holes (Courtesy Caltech-MIT-LIGO Laboratory, Produced By SXS Project)
Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a DC Comics supervillain * ''Warp'' (magazine), formerly the magazine and official organ of the New Zealand National Association for Science Music * Warp (record label), an independent UK record label ** Warp Films, a side project of Warp Records ** Warp 10: Influences, Classics, Remixes, a series of compilation albums issued by Warp Records in 1999 Albums * ''Warp'' (album), 1982 album by New Musik * ''Warp'', 2001 album by the Japanese band Judy and Mary * ''W.A.R.P.E.D.'', a 2005 album by Savatage guitarist Chris Caffery Songs * "Warp", 2009 single by The Bloody Beetroots * "Warped" (song), a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers from their 1995 album ''One Hot Minute'' * "Warped", a song by Blackfoot from the 1980 album ''Tomcattin''' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hulse–Taylor Binary
The Hulse–Taylor binary is a binary star system composed of a neutron star and a pulsar (known as PSR B1913+16, PSR J1915+1606 or PSR 1913+16) which orbit around their common center of mass. It is the first binary pulsar ever discovered. The pulsar was discovered by Russell Alan Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1974. Their discovery of the system and analysis of it earned them the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation." Discovery Using the Arecibo 305 m dish, Hulse and Taylor detected pulsed radio emissions and thus identified the source as a pulsar, a rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron star. The neutron star rotates on its axis 17 times per second; thus the pulse period is 59 milliseconds. After timing the radio pulses for some time, Hulse and Taylor noticed that there was a systematic variation in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes from the emission of residual thermal energy; no fusion takes place in a white dwarf. The nearest known white dwarf is at 8.6 light years, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910. The name ''white dwarf'' was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star or black hole. This includes over 97% of the other stars in the Milky Way. After the hydrogen- fusing period of a main-sequence star of low or medium mass ends, such a star will expand to a red ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binary Star
A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in which case they are called ''visual binaries''. Many visual binaries have long orbital periods of several centuries or millennia and therefore have orbits which are uncertain or poorly known. They may also be detected by indirect techniques, such as spectroscopy (''spectroscopic binaries'') or astrometry (''astrometric binaries''). If a binary star happens to orbit in a plane along our line of sight, its components will eclipse and transit each other; these pairs are called ''eclipsing binaries'', or, together with other binaries that change brightness as they orbit, ''photometric binaries''. If components in binary star systems are close enough they can gravitationally distort their mutual outer stellar atmospheres. In some cases, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Observations Of Gravitational Waves
This is a list of observed/candidate gravitational wave events. Direct observation of gravitational waves, which commenced with the detection of an event by LIGO in 2015, constitutes part of gravitational wave astronomy. LIGO has played a role in all subsequent detections to date, with Virgo joining in August 2017. Nomenclature and timeline Gravitational wave events are named starting with the prefix GW, while observations that trigger an event alert but have not (yet) been confirmed are named starting with the prefix S. Six digits then indicate the final two digits of the year the event was observed, two digits for the month and two digits for the day of observation. This is similar to the systematic naming for other kinds of astronomical event observations, such as those of gamma-ray bursts. Probable detections that are not confidently identified as gravitational wave events are designated LVT ("LIGO-Virgo trigger"). Known gravitational wave events come from the merger of two bla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gravitational-wave Astronomy
Gravitational-wave astronomy is an emerging branch of observational astronomy which aims to use gravitational waves (minute distortions of spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity) to collect observational data about objects such as neutron stars and black holes, events such as supernovae, and processes including those of the early universe shortly after the Big Bang. Gravitational waves have a solid theoretical basis, founded upon the theory of relativity. They were first predicted by Einstein in 1916; although a specific consequence of general relativity, they are a common feature of all theories of gravity that obey special relativity. However, after 1916 there was a long debate whether the waves were actually physical, or artefacts of coordinate freedom in general relativity; this was not fully resolved until the 1950s. Indirect observational evidence for their existence first came in the late 1980s, from the monitoring of the Hulse–Taylo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barry Barish
Barry Clark Barish (born January 27, 1936) is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Laureate. He is a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at California Institute of Technology and a leading expert on gravitational waves. In 2017, Barish was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves". In 2018, he joined the faculty at University of California, Riverside, becoming the university's second Nobel Prize winner on the faculty. In the fall of 2023, he will serve as the inaugural President’s Distinguished Endowed Chair in Physics at Stony Brook University. Birth and education Barish was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Lee and Harold Barish. His parents' families were Jewish immigrants from a part of Poland that is now in Belarus. Just after World War II, the family moved to Los Feliz in Los Angeles. He attended John Marshall High School and ot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kip Thorne
Kip Stephen Thorne (born June 1, 1940) is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he was the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009 and is one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity. He continues to do scientific research and scientific consulting, most notably for the Christopher Nolan film '' Interstellar''. Thorne was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves". Life and career Thorne was born on June 1, 1940, in Logan, Utah. His father, D. Wynne Thorne (1908–1979), was a professor of soil chemistry at Utah State University, and his mother, Alison (née C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rainer Weiss
Rainer "Rai" Weiss ( , ; born September 29, 1932) is an American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at MIT and an adjunct professor at LSU. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. He was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group. In 2017, Weiss was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves". Weiss has helped realize a number of challenging experimental tests of fundamental physics. He is a member of the Fermilab Holometer experiment, which uses a 40m laser interferometer to measure properties of space and time at quantum scale and provide Planck-precision tests of quantum holographic fluctuation. In a 2022 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Weiss talks about his life and career, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gravitational Wave Detector
A gravitational-wave detector (used in a gravitational-wave observatory) is any device designed to measure tiny distortions of spacetime called gravitational waves. Since the 1960s, various kinds of gravitational-wave detectors have been built and constantly improved. The present-day generation of laser interferometers has reached the necessary sensitivity to detect gravitational waves from astronomical sources, thus forming the primary tool of gravitational-wave astronomy. The first direct detection of gravitational waves made in 2015 by the Advanced LIGO observatories, a feat which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. Challenge The direct detection of gravitational waves is complicated by the extraordinarily small effect the waves produce on a detector. The amplitude of a spherical wave falls off as the inverse of the distance from the source. Thus, even waves from extreme systems such as merging binary black holes die out to a very small amplitude by the time they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LIGO
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry. These observatories use mirrors spaced four kilometers apart which are capable of detecting a change of less than one ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton. (that is, to Proxima Centauri at ). The initial LIGO observatories were funded by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) and were conceived, built and are operated by Caltech and MIT. They collected data from 2002 to 2010 but no gravitational waves were detected. The Advanced LIGO Project to enhance the original LIGO detectors began in 2008 and continues to be supported by the NSF, with important contributions from the United Kingdom's Science ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Observation Of Gravitational Waves
The first direct observation of gravitational waves was made on 14 September 2015 and was announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016. Previously, gravitational waves had been inferred only indirectly, via their effect on the timing of pulsars in binary star systems. The waveform, detected by both LIGO observatories, matched the predictions of general relativity for a gravitational wave emanating from the inward spiral and merger of a pair of black holes of around 36 and 29 solar masses and the subsequent "ringdown" of the single resulting black hole. The signal was named GW150914 (from ''gravitational wave'' and the date of observation 2015-09-14). It was also the first observation of a binary black hole merger, demonstrating both the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems and the fact that such mergers could occur within the current age of the universe. This first direct observation was reported around the world as a remarkable accomplishm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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