Posted on 03/16/2014 1:41:54 PM PDT by lbryce
Last week the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) stated rather nonchalantly that they will be hosting a press conference on Monday, March 17th, to announce a “major discovery.” Without a potential topic for journalists to muse on, this was as melodramatic as it got.
But then the Guardian posted an article on the subject and the rumors went into overdrive. The speculation is this: a U.S. team is on the verge of confirming they have detected primordial gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of spacetime that carry echoes of the big bang nearly 14 billion years ago.
If there is evidence for gravitational waves, it will be a landmark discovery, ultimately changing the face of physics.
Not only are gravitational waves the last untested prediction of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, but primordial gravitational waves will allow astronomers to glimpse the universe in its infancy.
“It’s been called the Holy Grail of cosmology,” Hiranya Peiris, a cosmologist from University College London, told the Guardian. “It would be a real major, major, major discovery.” Any convincing evidence would almost certainly lead to a Nobel prize.
The signal is rumored to have been found by a telescope known as BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization), which scans the sky from the south pole, looking for a subtle effect in the cosmic microwave background (CMB): the radiation released 380,000 years after the big bang when space became transparent to light and photons were allowed to travel freely across the universe.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
ROFLMAO!!!
Yep, there's evidence. The crest of one of those waves hits my bathroom scale every morning.
Good question — what industrial potential does this discovery have?
But it seems like almost all the industrial apps come out of quantum mechanics rather than relativity.
Though I expect it'll have a practical impact someday (if we avoid destroying ourselves in the meantime.)
“I hope they announce there are Nazis living on the Moon”
Coke Zero just attained escape velocity coming out of both nostrils.
Did they run their experiment while the Malaysian flight was in the air?
I believe Einstein once said something to the effect that for a theory to be well understood one should be able to explain it to their grandmother.
Nana, I... I.., ah...
Okay...what has their religion have to with anything?
Newtonian physics is just an approximation of Relativity. At slow speeds, Einstein’s special relativity equations of motion are approximated by Newton’s equations. You don’t need Einstein’s equations for GPS, but they would make it more accurate. Relativity has been proven mathematically, and empirically, time and time again. Newton can get you to the moon, work on GPS, and is find in our every day life, but it gives the wrong answers at higher speeds. One day we will have a solar system positioning system and it will require relativity to be accurate.
Newtonian physics is just an approximation of Relativity. At slow speeds, Einstein’s special relativity equations of motion are approximated by Newton’s equations. You don’t need Einstein’s equations for GPS, but they would make it more accurate. Relativity has been proven mathematically, and empirically, time and time again. Newton can get you to the moon, work on GPS, and is find in our every day life, but it gives the wrong answers at higher speeds. One day we will have a solar system positioning system and it will require relativity to be accurate.
find=fine ooops.
Ping
Just in time for the 100th anniversary of general relativity?
Possibly they discovered Obama’s Birth Certificate?
“...what she say.”
Backing the Big Bang - In breakthrough, astronomers find evidence of speedy ‘cosmic inflation’ of universe - Harvard Gazette - March 17, 2014
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/03/backing-the-big-bang/
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