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(edited ago)
its a really interesting experiment they tried, watching for fluctuations in pulsars radio signal made by a blackhole, either in binary or within the path. regular timings of the pulsar are measured, but get interrupted by gravitational waves that increase travel distance by up to 10m. no success.
all is not lost, the advanced LIGO by caltech, mit, and national science foundation just came online 18th September, now with twice the sensitivity of the initial LIGO interferometers. the Ligo is looking closer to home, it fires lasers, split by mirrors, into a 4km long, vacuum, L-shaped tunnels that bounce back to start, looking for delays/fluctuations of the lasers by weak gravitational waves that have traveled here at the speed of light from distant, violent, collisions like black hole collisions. it can detect arrival delay lengths on the order of one one-thousandth of the width of a proton
[–] 9-11 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago (edited ago)
its a really interesting experiment they tried, watching for fluctuations in pulsars radio signal made by a blackhole, either in binary or within the path. regular timings of the pulsar are measured, but get interrupted by gravitational waves that increase travel distance by up to 10m. no success.
all is not lost, the advanced LIGO by caltech, mit, and national science foundation just came online 18th September, now with twice the sensitivity of the initial LIGO interferometers. the Ligo is looking closer to home, it fires lasers, split by mirrors, into a 4km long, vacuum, L-shaped tunnels that bounce back to start, looking for delays/fluctuations of the lasers by weak gravitational waves that have traveled here at the speed of light from distant, violent, collisions like black hole collisions. it can detect arrival delay lengths on the order of one one-thousandth of the width of a proton
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34298363