On February 11, 2016, scientists of the LIGO collaboration sent ripples through the scientific community with the announcement of the detection of a gravitational wave. Gravitational waves are released from collisions of black holes, supernovae and even the remnants of radiation created by the birth of the Universe. It’s a story of bright brains, the unimaginably huge, the extremely tiny, and human persistence. Einstein predicted them 100 years ago but never expected anyone to be able to measure the tiny effect.
Gravitational Wave Safety Reflector
The remarkable discovery inspired the Particle Zoo to design a Gravitational Wave for the Particle Zoo collection. We are very excited to introduce it and you can find it in the funflector webshop. It is actually the first in the collection to be released as a safety reflector before existing as a plushie 🙂
So, what’s the big deal with gravitational waves?
Imagine 1.3 billion years ago, two black holes, about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, dancing around each other several times per second before merging into one black hole. Within a couple seconds, they release the energy equivlant of 3 suns worth of mass. That energy is spread around the universe in a gravitational wave and ripped through the LIGO detectors in September 14, 2015 during an engineering run. With two 4 km (2.5 miles) arms with state of the art vacuum chambers and laser beams, a distortion the size of 1/1000 of the diameter of a proton was detected. The 1000 scientists and engineers could hardly believe how lucky they were and for several months turned every stone to make sure it was a real event and not just a fault in the equipment or software. In December last year, they detected a second event. Below is a nice 6-minute explanation by awesome Neil deGrasse Tyson of the physics behind and the magnitude of the discovery.
Like many new discoveries, the detectors are miracles of engineering and the team had to push technology to new hights to accomplish the new discoveries. If you want to dive deep into both physics and technology, this hour long lecture on Gravitational Waves from SLAC is a good start.
Dr. Brian Lantz taking about “Gravitational Waves – The Sound of Black Holes Colliding”, courtesy of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
I remember learning about the LIGO experiment while taking a class in relativity in college. At that time, it seemed like they aimed for a very lofty goal, so I was thrilled to read about the discovery back in February. Although I’m not pursuing physics research anymore, it’s fun to circle back and provide friends, former colleges, physicists and other scientists with some unique and very niched physics related safety reflectors for jackets, bags and backpacks. I know firsthand how easy it is to lose track of the time and not get out of the lab until way later (after sunset) than planned…
Elisabeth