LIGO, the gravitational-wave observatory, is currently on ice. After running successfully (although without actually detecting any gravitational waves) through 2007, it got a mini-upgrade and ran as Enhanced LIGO in 2009 and 2010. But in October 2010 it shut off, and the original detectors were disassembled. Not because anything was wrong, but because of a long-anticipated upgrade to Advanced LIGO, a substantially more sensitive observatory.
Those upgrades are still going on, with the new detectors scheduled to come online in 2014. Advanced LIGO should provide more than a tenfold improvement in sensitivity, which allows the search for gravitational waves to pass an important threshold: with LIGO, it would have been possible but quite fortunate to actually detect gravitational waves from predicted astrophysical sources. With Advanced LIGO, it will be a surprise if we don’t detect them.
Clara Moskowitz has nice update on MSNBC.com. She quotes Kip Thorne as predicting that our first definite direct detection of gravitational waves will come in between 2014 and 2017 — within five years. Start your betting markets! Traditionally, looking at the skies in a new way (radio waves, cosmic rays, X-rays, gamma rays, neutrinos…) has always taught us something new and exciting. I’d be surprised if gravitational waves aren’t equally surprising.
LIGO was `sold’ to congress for about 2% of the SSC cost. Every bit of hype/news about LIGO that I read in the 90s ostensibly predicted the observation of grav waves. Then, after 7 science runs spanning the previous decade, All came up null. Now Kip tantalizes us w/the promise of `Advanced LIGO’. Because its `built’ on Einstein’s GR, which has passed Every observational test, no one can imagine what will happen if grav waves, analogously to SUSY, fail to be Directly observable.
Fundamental physics is in shock right now, despite the brief Higgsian euphoria. SUSY is dead, likewise extra dimensions, Tev black holes, & FAPP string theory. These theoretical paradigms developed over the last 30 yrs are on life-support, lingering in the hearts & minds of theorists in deep denial that something is terribly wrong.
We need to be realistic about grav waves’ direct observation, which may never be possible, no matter how sensitive LIGO becomes. GR will be relied upon as the bedrock of grav physics until the next Einstein arrives & replaces it with something grander.
LIGO is unique in the history of “big science”: never before has a project been funded so lavishly, for so long, with no real expectation of success for DECADES! It had damn well better detect something by 2017 as it’s starting to make JWST (ever a WORSE name for a major observatory?) look like a good investment.
Jimbo and realta fuar,
Relax. Take a chill pill. Remember that the military has 2 0r 3 telescopes that are much better than Hubble just sitting around doing nothing. Go complain about the military being funded “so lavishly”. So many billions of dollars spent invading other countries.
Phil: Retain yesterday’s news ! Astronomers were Given one of these scopes ~ 6mos ago. Not the point of the post as realtafuar & I emphasize. Grav waves, like SUSY, touted for Decades as a slam-dunk, May go belly-up at ALIGO. At which point we’ll have to accept that GR may have low-energy flaws, so that it’s only 95% correct.
Similarly, the spectacularly successful standard model of particle physics cannot resolve the Hierarchy problem or the Muon anomaly to name just a few. Something bigger & better is coming down the pike, but we’ll have to wait a while longer.
Jimbo,
Please tell me how you got 95%. If not, shut up.
@21 Georg
Thanks for the link. I have to say that I didn’t find his arguments that compelling. It’s the sort of stuff you hear down the pub… Regarding the orbital decay of the Taylor Hulse binary :
QUOTE
That fact may most probably be explained in terms of tidal friction as suggested in 1976
END QUOTE
I’m afraid you only get points if you do some maths and SHOW that your results match reality. Or at least approximate it better than the rival theory.
Announcement today: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112683631/white-dwarf-gravitational-wave-einstein/.
Feeling too queasy to write more—this is the first scientific thing really convincing me to lay off the ice-cream sundaes with their high graviton-inducing count.
Are we still doing pure science or tweaking the gizmo to give us the answer we want??????