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Post by juju on Feb 12, 2016 20:04:15 GMT
Anyone care to explain this to me? I gather it's the most groundbreaking discovery this century and proves Einstein's theory, but... my brain doesn't get it, sigh. I need it explaining in 'Idiots Guide To...' sentences.
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Post by tangent on Feb 12, 2016 21:24:34 GMT
Take an old balloon and stretch it across a teacup, holding it in position with one hand. You can imagine it as an ant's trampoline. Now take a pencil and press the middle down one centimetre in the middle. Place an ant on the edge and watch it walk across the surface. It tries to walk in a straight line but because the surface dips in the middle, the ant walks in a wonky path without realising it. Gravity has that effect on space. It distorts space so that when we try to travel in a straight line in a spaceship, we actually travel on a wonky path.
Now imagine two very heavy planets* careering towards each other in a head-on collision. Each planet distorts space in the same way that the pencil distorts the ant's trampoline. But when they collide, the distortions in space change so rapidly, they send shock waves throughout the galaxy. Ligo has recently detected those shock waves.
* Ligo actually detected two black holes colliding with each other but it's the same principle, just more impressive.
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Post by juju on Feb 12, 2016 22:01:30 GMT
What has that got to do with time though?
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Post by tangent on Feb 12, 2016 23:24:14 GMT
I dunno, why do you say that?
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Post by juju on Feb 12, 2016 23:29:03 GMT
Because that's what all the headlines/articles have been saying, that they are ripples in space time which (in theory) could eventually lead to the possibility of time travel.
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Post by juju on Feb 12, 2016 23:35:15 GMT
...although I would doubt they mean it in the HG Wells sense.
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Post by tangent on Feb 12, 2016 23:48:51 GMT
Oh, I see, I'll have to think about that.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Feb 15, 2016 8:36:20 GMT
Gee I didn't see any headlines about travel here when they announced the news. They had some beautiful images though.
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Yuki
Senior members
Posts: 632
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Post by Yuki on Feb 15, 2016 16:09:07 GMT
Because that's what all the headlines/articles have been saying, that they are ripples in space time which (in theory) could eventually lead to the possibility of time travel. This article answers your question.
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Yuki
Senior members
Posts: 632
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Post by Yuki on Feb 15, 2016 16:14:59 GMT
I gather it's the most groundbreaking discovery this century and proves Einstein's theory Technically, it only proves another prediction of Einstein's theory of Relativity, the last in a series of predictions that have been proven experimentally (for example, GPS only works because time dilation due to the change in the gravitational field works exactly as predicted by Einstein). You can't really prove a scientific theory. You can only prove its predictions experimentally one after another, within a margin of measurement error, and the theory remains correct as long as its predictions are correct, which is the case for Relativity so far.
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Post by Moose on Mar 30, 2016 2:04:47 GMT
I know those words, Yuki, but I am struggling to understand them - especially the bit about GPS. I wish I could.
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