what are the implications of negative detection?

senator2
senator2
Joined: 11 Nov 04
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> In fact MM experiment did

Message 4999 in response to message 4998

> In fact MM experiment did not disprove Aether theory completely (if you mean
> by aether the substance like air is for sound waves then yes it was disproved,
> but if you look at Aether as existance of prefered frame of reference then it
> was not)

Well, depending one's expection, the results could be taken differently, but a null result was not exactly expected, which seemed appropriate to this discussion.

> there is a Lorenz Relativity (LR) that explains MM experiment equally well as
> special relativity (SR) does.
> What i wanted to note is that MM experiment did not prove that SR theory is
> right, other (alternative) theories do exist that also comply with MM
> experiment results

That's the fun part of unexpected results, people try to come with with other explanations. Can't say I'm an expert on that particular topic historically. I remember Taylor and Wheeler just sort of threw LR in with SR.

> and here i must agree with senator2 - we should think about what
> nondetection would mean - what if pulsars do not generate gravitational waves
> at all ? do we have an alternative to GR theory ready to explain that ?

I wouldn't worry too much about having theories standing by yet, but it is an interesting possibility.

senator2
senator2
Joined: 11 Nov 04
Posts: 19
Credit: 41547
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> Are you a physicist? I have

Message 5000 in response to message 4997

> Are you a physicist? I have some questions that I'd love to ask. One can only
> go just so far in independent study.

Depends on what you're asking. There are plenty of PhDs who work in Relativity around here, my experience is only the normal undergrad courses in that area, my graduate work is in Quantum and Solid State and that's only Masters Level.

StarCharter
StarCharter
Joined: 19 Feb 05
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> Depends on what you're

Message 5001 in response to message 5000

> Depends on what you're asking. There are plenty of PhDs who work in
> Relativity around here, my experience is only the normal undergrad courses in
> that area, my graduate work is in Quantum and Solid State and that's only
> Masters Level.

My questions aren't at the Relativity level. They're a bit more basic than that.
I was thinking about interactions, other than pulsars that might produce a gravity wave strong enough to be detected. If it came from a different type of anamoly that didn't pulse and thus had no peroidic activity, this sky scan wouldn't see it (If I understand correctly). Since there appears to be a lot more dark matter than "regular" matter, I started reading about dark matter, dark stars, and dark energy. It was a short jump to "strange" or quark stars.

1) If a quark star was in a relationship such that accretion increased the mass, I assume it would collapse to a black hole. Would this not trigger a fairly sizable gravity wave of short duration but high intensity?

2) Some of what I've read says it may be possible for Strange Matter to exist outside of a neutron star. I'm assuming that not even a strangelet would escape a black hole. Would not an impact from a wandering strangelet and a black hole (or perhaps even a neutron star) cause a gravity wave, assuming sufficient size and mass for the strangelet?

3) Because I was researching (the web is all I have), I found this article. Is this accepted theory? Do we have a lot of wandering strangelets? Space is awfully big and earth is awfully small and yet apparently, more significant strangelets (assuming that's what this was) hit the earth than significant sized meteors so there would appear to be a lot of them (relativley anyway).

4) Something I read, somewhere, which I now can't find, said that neutron stars were oblate spheroids. Is this a necessity? Does this cause wobbles in the plane of rotation or does the high speed of rotation combined with high gravity insure that the star readjusts to this shape?

5) I understand that there are three basic types of pulsars. Most of what I read, if I understand correctly, infers that each is seperate and distinct from the other. Is it possible to have a x-ray pulsar that's also a magnatar? Is it possible that there may be points in time where a pulsar may be any of these three, given the right relationships?

I apologize for asking so much. I'm down to the point of calling my local college to ask if I could have half an hour to ask some questions from the physics staff. Thanks for being patient with me.

There are two secrets to life: 1) Don't tell everything you know...

gravity
gravity
Joined: 21 Feb 05
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i lost my reply by clicking

i lost my reply by clicking on the link below :( so i cannot reconstitute the details .. i wanted to thank everyone for thoughtful replies and interesting questions .. i will repeat two important remarks (that got lost). one is about binary neutron stars. they will only radiate GWs if at least one has rotational axis different from plane of common rotation, but statistically, this should happen most of the time, so it's a matter of sensitivity again - we might have to wait for advanced ligo or ligo ii to detect those kinds of GWs. one book i strongly recommend is Pulsar Astronomy by Lyne and Graham-Smith. the chapters on internal structure i find speculative, but the rest of the text is good. similarly, cosmology has been largely a speculative science historically. only with recent hard data such as spectral angular distribution in the CMB and similar polarization data - we can make decent hypotheses about the beginning of our universe. another decent book to peruse is Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku. it is also speculative, but worth reading. you can read my review on Amazon. if we could get GW research to the same level as CMB research, we would be close to understanding the true nature and structure of our universe, its origins, and 'heading' (where it is going). i believe we will find out the truth eventually - i just hope we do not have to wait too long - and that we can participate in the discoveries :)

please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/faraday_group/ and consider joining; we are a mutually inspiring group of determinists with some very interesting ideas!

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