Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Last Piece of Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity In Line For Final ‘Proof’

The last piece of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity may be about to fall into place 100 years after he first revealed it to the world.

Scientists searching for minute traces of gravitational waves, infinitesimally subtle distortions through space-time that Einstein predicted would ripple off giant black holes and dying stars millions of light years away, may be about to announce one of the biggest breakthroughs in modern physics.

Whispers have been circulating for months that a hypersensitive detector spanning the breadth of the US has finally caught the elusive phenomenon. The team is expected to make a definitive announcement tomorrow (Thursday).

If they have found the trail left by gravitational waves, it will be more than just a vindication of Einstein’s mathematical masterpiece. The discovery would allow stargazers to map out hidden galaxies on the other side of the universe by looking out for almost imperceptible disturbances in our own.

In November 1915 Einstein stunned the Prussian Academy of Science with his formulas showing how gravity might be caused by massive objects curving the fabric of space and time. He later used the theory to predict that these two vast bodies circling each other would spread waves of gravity at the speed of light, very slightly expanding and contracting the distances between atoms in distant galaxies.

While astronomers have found ample evidence backing up the central planks of general relativity, gravitational waves are so delicate that they have proven much harder to pin down.

The leading candidate for the job is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which consists of a detector deep in the wilds of Washington state on the west coast of the US and another 3,000km (1,865 miles) away in rural Louisiana.

Each facility is made up of three 4km-long vacuum tubes containing ultra-sensitive lasers that can detect the slightest disturbance from gravitational waves. If the lasers are knocked out of place physicists will be able to work out roughly which part of the sky the waves came from.

Lawrence Krauss, a well-known theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, is the most influential researcher to publicly endorse the rumours on Twitter.

By Oliver Moody
With many thanks to The Australian

UPDATE: Einstein’s Gravitational Waves Detected In Major Breakthrough

In an announcement that electrified the world of astronomy, scientists said they have finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago.

Some scientists likened the breakthrough to the moment Galileo took up a telescope to look at the planets.

The discovery of these waves, created by violent collisions in the universe, excites astronomers because it opens the door to a new way of observing the cosmos. For them, it’s like turning a silent movie into a talkie because these waves are the soundtrack of the cosmos.

“Until this moment we had our eyes on the sky and we couldn’t hear the music,” said Columbia University astrophysicist Szabolcs Marka, a member of the discovery team. “The skies will never be the same.”

An all-star international team of astrophysicists used a newly upgraded and excruciatingly sensitive $1.1 billion instrument known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, to detect a gravitational wave from the distant crash of two black holes, one of the ways these ripples are created.

To make sense of the raw data, the scientists translated the wave into sound. At a news conference, they played what they called a “chirp” — the signal they heard on September 14. It was barely perceptible even when enhanced.

Some physicists said the finding is as big a deal as the 2012 discovery of the subatomic Higgs boson, sometimes called the “God particle.” Some said this is bigger.

“It’s really comparable only to Galileo taking up the telescope and looking at the planets,” said Penn State physics theorist Abhay Ashtekar, who wasn’t part of the discovery team.
“Our understanding of the heavens changed dramatically.”

Gravitational waves, first theorised by Albert Einstein in 1916 as part of his theory of general relativity, are extraordinarily faint ripples in space-time, the hard-to-fathom fourth dimension that combines time with the familiar up, down, left and right. When massive but compact objects like black holes or neutron stars collide, they send gravity ripples across the universe.

Scientists found indirect proof of the existence of gravitational waves in the 1970s — computations that showed they ever so slightly changed the orbits of two colliding stars — and the work was honoured as part of the 1993 Nobel prize in physics. But Thursday’s announcement was a direct detection of a gravitational wave.

And that’s considered a big difference.

“It’s one thing to know soundwaves exist, but it’s another to actually hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” said Marc Kamionkowsi, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who wasn’t part of the discovery team. “In this case we’re actually getting to hear black holes merging.” Gravitational waves are the “soundtrack of the universe,” said team member Chad Hanna of Pennsylvania State University.

Detecting gravitational waves is so difficult that when Einstein first theorised about them, he figured scientists would never be able to hear them. Einstein later doubted himself and even questioned in the 1930s whether they really do exist, but by the 1960s scientists had concluded they probably do, Ashtekar said. In 1979, the National Science Foundation decided to give money to the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to come up with a way to detect the waves. Twenty years later, they started building two LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, and they were turned on in 2001. But after years with no luck, scientists realised they had to build a more advanced detection system, which was turned on last September.

“This is truly a scientific moonshot and we did it. We landed on the moon,” said David Reitze, LIGO’s executive director.

The new LIGO in some frequencies is three times more sensitive than the old one and is able to detect ripples at lower frequencies that the old one couldn’t. And more upgrades are planned.

Scientists found indirect proof of the existence of gravitational waves in the 1970s — computations that showed they ever so slightly changed the orbits of two colliding stars — and the work was honoured as part of the 1993 Nobel prize in physics. But Thursday’s announcement was a direct detection of a gravitational wave.

And that’s considered a big difference.

“It’s one thing to know soundwaves exist, but it’s another to actually hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” said Marc Kamionkowsi, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who wasn’t part of the discovery team. “In this case we’re actually getting to hear black holes merging.” Gravitational waves are the “soundtrack of the universe,” said team member Chad Hanna of Pennsylvania State University.

Detecting gravitational waves is so difficult that when Einstein first theorised about them, he figured scientists would never be able to hear them. Einstein later doubted himself and even questioned in the 1930s whether they really do exist, but by the 1960s scientists had concluded they probably do, Ashtekar said. In 1979, the National Science Foundation decided to give money to the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to come up with a way to detect the waves.

Twenty years later, they started building two LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, and they were turned on in 2001. But after years with no luck, scientists realised they had to build a more advanced detection system, which was turned on last September.

“This is truly a scientific moonshot and we did it. We landed on the moon,” said David Reitze, LIGO’s executive director.

The new LIGO in some frequencies is three times more sensitive than the old one and is able to detect ripples at lower frequencies that the old one couldn’t. And more upgrades are planned.
With thanks to The Australian