Lab tuned to gravity's 'ripples' (BBC) {gravity wave detector/LIGO}

[eppur_se_muova]

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

One of the great scientific experiments of our age is now fully underway.

A German/UK team has put the giant GEO 600 gravitational wave detector in a continuous observational mode.

The Hanover lab is trying to detect the ripples created in the fabric of space-time that sweep out from merging black holes or exploding stars.

Success would confirm fundamental physical theories and open a new window on the Universe, enabling scientists to probe the moment of creation itself.

GEO 600 is working alongside a US project known as Ligo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory). It may also be joined in the hunt by an Italian lab within a year.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5111642.stm

[Orrex]

1. I kind of wish

that they'd drop all that "moment of creation" gobbledygook. Not that it isn't reasonably descriptive, but it's invariably latched onto and misrepresented by Creationists and other lunatics.

Better IMO to use a phrase like "the beginning of the universe," which is largely free of religious baggage.

It's a cool article, though, and a cool experiment!

[FogerRox]

2. yeah really, they are just measuring gravity.............

)..... directly.....not indirectly ...

TO me that so friggin huge, by itself. It doesnt need any embelishment.

[rman]

3. They are detecting fluctuations in local gravity,

which is not the same as gravity itself; it is not that they are measuring the 'medium' or 'carrier' of gravity. It is like measuring ripples in water without measuring the water itself. In fact the article mentions it as gravity's 'ripples'.

Which makes sense because contemporary scientific consensus is that gravity = curvature of space due to the presence of mass. In other words, there is no 'medium' or 'carrier' of gravity, no gravity particle or somesuch.

Still pretty huge though.