On Feb 22, 5:11 am, "TMA" <T...@hotmail.com> wrote:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/ligo_results_030407.html
Looking for gravity waves is like looking for ET's it seems. If these
waves
aren't detected within 20 years
it will be a huge blow to relativity.
Hardly.
It is much more likely that the experimentalists cannot reach the
sensitivity needed to distinguish gravity waves from thermal noise on
that timescale. GR will live on until such time as a major
gravitational event occurs close enough that it should be detected but
was not. The signals they are looking for are unbelievably feeble.
My guess is when they get the experiment sensitive enough they will
see them. The behaviour of binary pulsars is exactly in line with what
GR predicts. In fact it was so precisely in line with what GR
predicted that the discreprancies between the first binary pulsar
observed and theory was used to find an error in the computer algebra
program that generates the series to compute the gravitational
potential in the solar system.
Regards,
Martin Brown
