Gravity Waves *Serious discussion, no troll*

[JoshexProxy]

OK, what do we have in reality with the experiment performed?

We have a laser in a tunnel and two impacting/merging black holes.

Lets start with the later, there are many unknown yet speculated things about black holes, some say they create a wormhole inside them which bends space to another point, some science fiction has proposed the concept of a whitehole which spews things absorbed by a black hole. One thing known about blackholes is this; the amount of stuff that goes in is not the amount of stuff that comes out not as mass or energy.

this is a major flaw in our standard model, the inability to describe a blackhole in complete, where does the matter go? as with everything else in our universe the energy in equals the energy out, it's all just an energy transfer. with how knowledge of black holes is progressing it is becoming less and less likely that there is a wormhole in the center of a blackhole, so where does the energy go? science has a few guesses but none even combined accounts for all of the matter.

Even Stephen Hawking the so called 'author of what we know of backholes' has recently in the past years said he was previously wrong about how blackholes exist, and his current hypothesis on them is probably better but not guaranteed to be entirely accurate, and he would probably never claim that it is perfectly accurate.

So for us to assume that just because blackholes are massive and generate a huge pull-force greater than any other known force in the universe that their collision would generate a gravity wave is a sound idea, however now that we have encountered such a wave as described by theologians we need to verify that it is in fact a 'gravity wave' and not caused by another force of which we are unaware (this part has not been done).

Gravity itself, we have some facts and numbers which can describe it's interactions, yes that is known, but then again, it is a formless force which defies physics, there must be something making this force, it cannot be formless. Some cite centrifugal force as one culprit, some cite mass itself.

Einstein cites mass itself, saying that mass bends space time in approximation to its intensity creating a 'celestial tabletop' if you will around the object. this has been artistically represented as a bent grid which forms a bend at a set distance from each object. though the artistic representations show a bent plane, it is assumed that it means to be a 3D space that conforms to the same or similar parameters.

his theory relied on finding 'gravity waves' and a 'graviton', why a graviton? why aren't the waves enough? if there are waves, then there is an energy emitter creating them, this energy emitter is definitely sub-atomic but can exist in a compound with energy equal to the quantity (in our case the black holes themselves are the compound not the particle. Einstein predicts they are the most prevalent of all subatomic particles. If the graviton were found that would be the finishing touch to definitively prove Einstein's model, but it has not been found at all in 40 years of colliding particles in the hadron collider. But aren't the waves proof enough? no, because again, they could be caused by a different force or a different interaction entirely.

and all of that brings us to the testing equipment, more often than not there is one rule in science proven true, the rule of bias; if you spend enough time trying to find something or prove something, eventually you will succeed. this is as much true for the truth as it is for biases, if you want to find something bad enough, your mind starts a tunnel vision and may ignore other information found which is not the information you are looking for, some of which could be contrary but was never coded as such because you weren't focused on looking for contrary information.

more often than not, when someone spends a very long time looking for something, any positive information collected spawns and instant release of findings and heavily publicized statements (we've got that). but also more often than not, it is found after the fact to be an equipment malfunction or fault of the experiment due to un-forseen interactions followed by severely less publicized statement and finding retractions. that is why even if it is a dual occurrence at two identical labs, one has to be able to reproduce the data (they have not done this yet, and honestly without it, it becomes psuedoscience if released and proclaimed as truth, it has not been cross checked!). That doesn't mean copy the data and flame the world with it (they did that), that means there needs to be more than one recorded occurrence at a different time (having two sensors record the same freak happening no matter how big they are doesn't count) and that every time there is such an occurrence it needs to spawn the same effects. if the occurrences are very rare we also have time in between and a duty to run our own tests with every other possible thing that could have caused a misreading or malfunction in the equipment's reading. this has not been done with the proposed laser tunnel.

what is an alternative? the energy emitted by the collision could have spewed a field barrage of photons or other energies known or unknown which could have created a visible lensing effect and/or reverse lensing effect between objects they passed which shook those objects enough to jiggle loose particles (of varying sizes) free from their lodgings/normal travel. all it would take would be a slight vent of heat energy or other energy including dust venting from the tunnel itself and intercepting the laser for that split second thus changing the distance in the tunnel. heat waves, magnetic waves ETC. would be the best culprit, in fact magnetic waves and heatwaves could have been generated by the lasers running 24/7 and would have been accounted for in the tests at their normal travel rate and their normal rate of crossing the laser's path, however a shake of the entire earth would not cause earthquakes but these energies would be invisibly rippling in the tunnel (their rate of travel would have changed, causing their normal rate of crossing the laser to change by the exact amount the earth was shaken) as the placement of the walls suddenly moves, these ripples could cause the observed occurrence of the distance changing due to their ability to refract and reflect light this rippling would only occur as the planet is shaking while the wave passes and would bottom out slowly as the shaking stops.

so it's not that the distance changed, it's that the passing wave of whatever it was caused a disruption in normal fields in the tunnel causing them to build up and ripple in laser sight (or to leave laser sight for a split instant!), just like sliding a bucket of already rippling water on the floor, the ripples intensity and direction will suddenly change and builld up on one side, and in this case produced a change in recorded distance. it's like measuring weight on a scale, where one time you add a plastic bag and the next time you don't.

so in my opinion, the test is inconclusive and the means of testing were insufficient because we did not know what to expect fro this interaction. however that's not to say nothing happened, and I'm sure we can learn something from this occurrence, but we must ascertain exactly what happened, and what they are saying happened is one of the cases I said earlier; they spoke before they knew if it could be a fault with the test. Honestly they should have been prepared to question their results, this is an occurrence that has never happened before in our recorded history, it's a sound hypothesis to expect that something unexpected might happen that could still produce desired results. but it will be a while before their heads clear enough from proclaiming victory to actually question if there could be another explanation or technicality.

To be truthful the entire theory of a gravity wave negates our explanation of gravity, gravity is a product of mass, therefore a gravity wave would need to have a mass and that mass would need to be present at the point of impact later on to continue effect. to say that it can ripple off of a mass and leave entirely traveling infinitely onward away from it's mass is complete and utter contradiction. to say that it bends space time around the object at a set distance would indicate that this distance cannot be broken by it, much like a magnetic field cannot exceed certain distances past itself (though it can with a halbach array but is presented with a new max threshold equal to the original threshold multiplied the distance it is forced to travel to the next opposite pole)

If this were a gravity wave from the colliding black holes, and it hit earth, then we have serious concerns at hand. why? if the field can only travel so far from it's mass we can estimate that it returns to it's mass as well once it hits it's new threshold distance. whats more if it were a gravity wave there is a chance that we and everything else it touched so far were picked up and carried with it, this would be invisible to us at present as as far as we can see all objects are still the same distance from us and nothing has really changed (same thing with a group of surfers riding a tsunami, they move together at the rate of the wave with the wave). this is troubling, because if we were riding the wave we would almost have no way to know it from the placement of things in visible proximity, and eventually it will hit it's threshold and return to it's source (a now super massive blackhole). In effect if we have been hit with a gravity wave from this black hole, then we have already entered it's pull and haven't realized it.

If this is the case then what scientists are so happy about finding could be their own doom. Good news is, the closer we get to the black hole the better we can study it, bad news is the knowledge will be in vain as it will be crushed inside a quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion ton blender (I'm not even sure that's enough quadrillion multiples). how long did it take for that gravity wave to get to us? 1.3 billion years? ok well at east we've got time to figure out if we've entered the "no return zone" of the wave and even if we have doom wont happen for at least another 1.3 billion years.

this is my no trolling view on this topic.

[LateNights]

What you said is kinda true, but also redundant - people are already actually doing the work you're suggesting - part of it is actually detecting something in the first place, which they believe to be a gravitational wave...

You said it yourself - the work has taken decades to get to this point - work that other people are actually doing, not just crapping on about in a forum for a video game...

Plus, Arcana has already explained the scientific method to you - which I'm pretty sure almost everyone learned in high school by the way...

[Shenku]

Uhh.... No... I don't think a gravitational wave, even from black holes, no matter the distance unless it was already practically right next to our solar system already (in which case, we'd be screwed anyways), would cause us to be pulled into it just because of some minor ripples we happened to maybe pick up (if indeed that's what it was to begin with), particularly because of the diminished effect of gravity over large distances. (Other wise we'd probably have been sucked into the Sun long ago)

And for the sake of argument, even if we were heading towards a black hole, based on my rather limited knowledge of orbital dynamics depending on our solar system's vector versus the black hole's, our solar system might very well sling-shot around and past it at worst, or miss it by a few dozen light years at best. And those two scenarios are assuming it were even happening to begin with, to which I say there's no proof that it is.

Regardless, in the grand scheme of things on a cosmic scale, the chances of it happening are as remote as getting hit by an asteroid while flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field (Contrary to C3P0's claims, the chances of hitting an asteroid while flying through an asteroid field are actually rather remote unless you're a really terrible pilot...). That is to say, our solar system being sucked into a black hole could happen, but the chances are so remote, we probably won't see such an event happen for millions or possibly even billions of years assuming it's even going to happen. In either case, we'll be long since dead by then if it even does happen, so it's not like we'd still be around to have to worry about it anyways.

As far as the claims about finding the gravity waves themselves, I'm still waiting for more data and tests to be done before I believe any of the media hype. This information got leaked before they even finished analyzing the data from the test that they thought they detected these waves from, and ever since the media has been going goofy over it, even though most of these "journalists" don't even really understand what they're reporting on. Meanwhile, the more level headed people in the scientific community all know to look at any such "discoveries" with a hefty grain of salt until further investigation and studying has been done.


Short version? Wait until they finish their tests and analysis's, and don't jump to crazy conclusions (especially of the "dooooom" variety, cause that's just silly...).

[JoshexProxy]

Uhh.... No... I don't think a gravitational wave, even from black holes, no matter the distance unless it was already practically right next to our solar system already (in which case, we'd be screwed anyways), would cause us to be pulled into it just because of some minor ripples we happened to maybe pick up (if indeed that's what it was to begin with), particularly because of the diminished effect of gravity over large distances. (Other wise we'd probably have been sucked into the Sun long ago)

And for the sake of argument, even if we were heading towards a black hole, based on my rather limited knowledge of orbital dynamics depending on our solar system's vector versus the black hole's, our solar system might very well sling-shot around and past it at worst, or miss it by a few dozen light years at best. And those two scenarios are assuming it were even happening to begin with, to which I say there's no proof that it is.

Regardless, in the grand scheme of things on a cosmic scale, the chances of it happening are as remote as getting hit by an asteroid while flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field (Contrary to C3P0's claims, the chances of hitting an asteroid while flying through an asteroid field are actually rather remote unless you're a really terrible pilot...). That is to say, our solar system being sucked into a black hole could happen, but the chances are so remote, we probably won't see such an event happen for millions or possibly even billions of years assuming it's even going to happen. In either case, we'll be long since dead by then if it even does happen, so it's not like we'd still be around to have to worry about it anyways.

As far as the claims about finding the gravity waves themselves, I'm still waiting for more data and tests to be done before I believe any of the media hype. This information got leaked before they even finished analyzing the data from the test that they thought they detected these waves from, and ever since the media has been going goofy over it, even though most of these "journalists" don't even really understand what they're reporting on. Meanwhile, the more level headed people in the scientific community all know to look at any such "discoveries" with a hefty grain of salt until further investigation and studying has been done.


Short version? Wait until they finish their tests and analysis's, and don't jump to crazy conclusions (especially of the "dooooom" variety, cause that's just silly...).

I agree whole heartedly with you, in fact I was waiting for someone to reply like this rather than editing to point out that I forgot to consider the rubber-band effect. First of all in order for the waves to escape the blackholes they would need to be traveling with such intensity and speed as needed to perform the impossible escape (impossible because not even light can escape meaning they would have to travel faster than light initially) and still have speed and intensity left to continue on-wards. Not to mention if they are gravity waves they are impossible to separate from their mass meaning the farther they travel the more tension and pull is placed on them slowing them down, however the recoil would actually be faster because instead of fighting the pull of their mass it would be traveling with it, so it wouldn't be 1.3 billion years away and could be calculated if I knew more about the wave's predicted speed at present (which would tell me how much pull is being exerted on it now and consequently how much force it had at the beginning by comparing that pull to the speed over the given time, from where we could figure how strong of a recoil we will get when it backlashes after hitting it's threshold and multiply that per time based on the applied rate of pull that would be added to it's returned motion by the original mass and proximity.

you may be right that we would end up orbiting it, but we may end up being slung right through it too. Oh gosh, we would need to consider the possibility that other blackholes may have caught the wave in their gravity field and stretched it out beyond normal limits! (which would make sense seeing that it probably comes from a different galaxy and has entered our galaxy's space which the central body of which is a super massive blackhole) but in the end that may bring an equilibrium keeping the wave taught and never returni... no that would be bad, that would mean the smaller body would pull towards the bigger body and suck-up everything in between, it would be cataclysmic.

so the other doom saying and the worse one at that, is not us sinking into a black hole but rather a black hole flying right at us being slung at light-speed by the force of its gravity combined with another blackhole's.

given that nothing can escape a black-hole not even light and that it is proposed that not even time can escape it's pull, one would have to admit that the only way the wave we experienced could escape it's gravitational pull would be to travel at a speed faster than light or time (at least initially).

again though there's probably nothing to worry about, it's probably not even a gravity wave, it was probably something far more simple that will be explained to us shortly after their tests have concluded.

[Shenku]

I don't think that's necessarily the case, cause something like what you're describing would just break everything we already know about physics and astrophysics, because it just doesn't make sense.

Honestly, I think you're reading WAAAAAaaaaaaay too far into things, so once again, calm down, take a breath, and wait until they finish their analysis's and tests.

Jumping to conclusions this early on something is how most idiots become convinced the earth is flat, we're the center of the universe, the moon landing was faked, satellites are reading our thoughts, Major League Baseball wants to know all our hat sizes, etcetera.....