Gravitational waves have been found, scientists say
Source: CNN
Gravitational waves are a reality, according to scientists from an institution that has been hoping to observe them.
"We have detected gravitational waves. We did it," said David Reitze, executive director of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
The discovery, based on ripples in space-time detected by LIGO, supports a prediction made by Albert Einstein that's essential to his general theory of relativity. The ripples LIGO detected are based on the merging of two black holes, Reitze said.
"What's really exciting is what comes next," he said. "I think we're opening a window on the universe -- a window of gravitational wave astronomy."
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/gravitational-waves-feat/index.html
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Last edited Thu Feb 11, 2016, 07:32 PM - Edit history (1)
And I desperately want to think I misheard just now, but I could almost swear I heard an NPR correspondent say that this will help "prove" things about the universe.
Wasn't listening closely, I admit. When the story replays, I'll have a better listen and update.
ETA: Turned out the word was "probe." I'm a little relieved, anyway!
So, Ted Cruz. What do you think of these newly discovered gravity waves?
Well, once again, the liberal, atheistic, intellecto-facsists are once again making a mockery of our Christian values. And when I'm president, I'll outlaw all science that's dangerous to the church, the economy, and conformity.
Aaah, the American media. Don't it make you proud?
First, you've got what math is to science wrong, backwards even.
The previous science and experiments inform the form of the theory. The theory must be self-consistent and must reproduce all the known results, no anomalies allowed. It must make testable predictions, in other words extend existing theory beyond the existing science. It must be simple, but not too simple -- Einstein said that, correctly. The latter two are the most important. New theories must extend science and must obey Okham's razor, the principle of parsimony.
Mathematics is just a system of logic, nothing else. But it is precise. It the tool of science but is only a tool by which theory is expressed. It is like the English language is how Shakespeare is expressed or musical notation is how Mozart is expressed. So it is with science.
Now if one wants to delve into the question of why is the nature of the universe expressable by mathematics, I am not the one to respond to that. My training was in math and physics, not philosophy. Ask a philosopher. I am sure one could waste plenty of hours on such a question. For physics, the proof is that it has worked pretty damned well for many centuries with a rather astounding accuracy, quantum field theory especially.
You also seem to misunderstand general relativity, gravitation. Don't feel bad. It is not an easy topic. The tensor mathematics and Hilbert space are beyond my studies. However, I am aware of what it predicts. One thing is black holes, which nobody had heard of before Einstein but were hypothesized from the theory by several people, including Georges LeMaître, among others. That they weren't discovered for decades was the fulfillment of the theory's predictive power. That a whole century later another prediction from the theory, gravity waves, have been apparently seen is another testament to the fecundity of scientific theory.
And nobody since Einstein has ever said that gravitational effects can travel faster than light as a wave. To the contrary, gravitational effects travel at the speed of light. They are not waves, but a warping of space-time, the four dimensional construct with three spacial dimensions and one of time (the latter multiplied by the speed of light for the units to be correct).
I suggest that you get into this, if it interests you. It is really cool stuff. And it works really damned well. It works well enough for GPS systems, or to send a small spacecraft precisely past a close rendevous with Pluto, some billions of miles away. And Pluto's moving, so the controllers had to know precisely where Pluto was going to be ten years in advance because that's how long it took New Horizons to get there. Along the way it got a boost from a close approach to Jupiter which also had to be planned years in advance when Jupiter wasn't there.
I'd say that was good enough. Science delivers the goods, my friend.
Oops! Time for the debate!
I do not deny Einstein I just don't think he had figured out the nature of the universe as you seem to feel. Even Einstein knew he did not have the total picture.
But those links, plus lots more like it shows that all of science is not in lock step with a dogma...and well it should not be. There is a lot more to gravity as well as the universe as a whole that is yet to be discovered and main stream science is not even close to knowing it all.
(In a friendly way, my friend.)
Spooky action at a distance was about quantum theory, not gravity. In fact, that is the largest gap in physics, how to reconcile gravitation and the standard model, the latter which is the body of quantum theory that describes the other three forces.
The problem is that the two theories do not work together. Gravity is so fucking weak that when combined with the other forces things go badly awry.
Quantum gravity is not solved. So there is no spooky action at a distance with gravitation. Einstein's theory describes it as a warping of four dimensional space-time. He more or less put it this way: "Mass tells space how to warp. The warping of space tells the mass how to move." It is an astounding theory, but it is a classical theory, not a quantum theory.
Hope this helps.
Physical theory is NOT created to "make the math work". You have it backwards or you are making the common confusion between mathematics and calculations.
Einstein's wife and Einstein developed and extended new mathematics (particularly tensors) to describe observations that had been made, some of them made before he was born (Michelson-Morley, Mercury's aphelion precession, for examples).
Nobody claims gravity is the only force, except perhaps you. There are four forces: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. The four forces are not merely hypothesized; they are very well observed and documented.
Mathematics would work in a universe with only one force or one with seven forces. Observations drive mathematics. We observe four forces.
Black holes do NOT require faster than light phenomena. Dark matter is not a black hole as you claim ("the prime example"
.
Gravity waves travel AT the speed of light.
Dark matter is an unanswered question, sure. Everyone agrees on this, so you can't generate controversy by citing it. Dark matter does not "exist to make the math work". Dark matter is hypothesized because of gravitational observations, specifically galactic velocities and vectors.
You claim you don't understand this and it is obvious. Further, you don't present any credible links (or any links) for your outlandish claims. You are the one make extraordinary claims and yet you don't present even ordinary evidence, let alone extraordinary evidence (reference your demand for it regarding gravity waves in an earlier post).
A theory is a hypothesis writ large. A theory is a hypothesis that has withstood repeated attempts to break it.
It is also important to note that evidence that supports a theory (i.e. doesn't break it) always has a degree of precision.
A great example is Newton's Theory of Gravitation. Einstein did not find a way to break it, but rather to extend it. Newton's Theory checks out to very high precision in ordinary circumstances (though it never has been "proved"
. However, Einstein's Theory was able to explain certain discrepancies that show up under extreme circumstances, such as the orbit of Mercury, or the orbit of the binary star system 1.3 billion light years away that was used in the LIDO experiment.
The theory of gravity will always be a theory and only a theory, but don't test it by stepping out of a 15th story window.
Wonder how they would measure them 
of a purely theoretical prediction, however. The very best kind of science! 
Dogs poop in alignment with Earth’s magnetic field, study finds
Dogs use the Earth’s magnetic field when they’re relieving themselves. Not only that, but canines choose to do so in a north-south axis, a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology says.
The study suggests that dogs are sensitive to small variations in Earth’s magnetic field. After examining 70 dogs — made up of 37 breeds — over two years, 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations, researchers found that under “calm magnetic field conditions,” dogs preferred to “excrete with the body being aligned along the north-south axis,” avoiding east-west altogether. Dogs were observed in a free-roaming environment, meaning they were not leashed and not influenced by walls or roads that would influence linear movement. Why do the dogs prefer the north-south axis and avoid east-west? That was unclear, according to the study:
....
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/dogs-poop-in-alignment-with-earths-magnetic-field-study-finds/
Now those are forces produced by mass, whereas the article is talking about forces that may be generated or manipulated by space or time - I don't think we have the final word on that, right? Still, i'm not ready to discount the idea that another species might have something in their world we don't understand.
Think I will go spend some time with the dogs, look for waves...
Or perhaps we don't understand how a species that sees the world through their nose senses anything much.
But I have long thought as poorly as humans understand themselves I doubt they understand much of anything about the point of view of a dog,
Ymmv
world is defined by that nose, like we think we can see. But I suspect they are fooled less often.
I'm not sure we even know enough to figure out how the world seem to them, other than superficially.
Great, they are.
in the world of physics and in general. 
Is Excited!
Guy was ahead of his time. 
Right now we need to our eye on the latest advances in genome editing, like CRISPR. 
