Next Observing Run to Start April 1st

rbpeake
rbpeake
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Topic 218510

Good news!  A more sensitive LIGO run (after various upgrades) is set to start April 1st!

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20190326

tullio
tullio
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VIRGO too is starting and

VIRGO too is starting and will cooperate with LIGO. A message after each event will be automatically sent to the astronomical community.

Tullio

rbpeake
rbpeake
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Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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Ah ! They are going to do a

Ah ! They are going to do a spot of light squeezing too. :-)

It's a quantum matter and you can't beat Heisenberg, merely trade off variation in one variable for variation in the corresponding conjugate variable. For time and energy the product of their uncertainties must be a minimum.

So one can manipulate matters to beat down the time uncertainty ie. for a group of photons make them all arrive closer in time, but the penalty is in the greater energy fluctuation of the photons. This can bring the interferometer closer to it's true momentary 'null' position ( via adjustments guided by measurements at the dark port ) but with a loss of sensitivity to weaker signals. This is more important for higher gravitational signal frequencies due to less confounding of one phase value with an adjacent one.

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

astro-marwil
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Hallo! It´s best, that it is

Hallo!

It´s best, that it is no 1st April joke.

Let´s hope for many new BANG!

Kind regards and happy crunching

Martin

 

rbpeake
rbpeake
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There is an app for iOS that

There is an app for iOS that alerts you to gw detections.

From Sky and Telescope :

LIGO will announce coordinates of new gravitational-wave events via GCN Notices, while announcements of follow-up observations will come in GCN Circulars. You can visit the GCN website to subscribe to Notices, Circulars, or both via your email.

Or, if you prefer to have an app for that, citizen scientist Peter Kramer has created Gravitational Wave Events for iOS systems. In the realm of "little things that cause inordinate delight," you can even set the app's alert tone to be a "gravitational wave chirp."

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