[time-nuts] LIGO detects gravitational waves

[Tom Van Baak]

Hi Chris,

With a single event it's hard to know if luck was involved. But since the recent upgrades, LIGO is much more sensitive than it was years ago -- so detecting something this time was maybe not unexpected. Still, much of all this is unknown which is why gravity wave (GW) research is so interesting. You'll read numbers like "2 per year to 3 per day" in:

https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~ajw/IntroPapers/christensen.pdf

It's not just black holes (BH) but also neutron stars (NS) and so as you read papers you'll see BH-BH, NS-NS, and even BH-NS mentioned. On the topic of expected event rates, here are two more papers to keep you busy:

https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~jkanner/ligo-fermi/talks/150914_Siellez_coincident_rate.pdf

https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0103/T1300432/002/main.pdf

/tvb

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Chris Albertson 
To: Tom Van Baak ; Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 9:33 AM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] LIGO detects gravitational waves


I've been wondering if this would ever happen in our lifetime.  The detector is good but still it requires such a huge and rare event to be detectable as two black holes crashing into each other.  How often does that happen?  Are black hole ever formed in pairs, if not a crash would be very unlikely.  Is this a case of unbelievable luck or is this an every few years event?     I guess we will find out 


On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 8:00 AM, Tom Van Baak <tvb at leapsecond.com> wrote:

>From the live stream (https://youtu.be/c7293kAiPZw)
Announced a couple of minutes ago
Screen captures attached
The ultimate time nuts relativity experiment...

/tvb
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-- 


Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California