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Physicists around the world are celebrating the discovery of gravitational waves

Scientists announced the discovery of gravitational waves

Физики всего мира празднуют открытие гравитационных волн
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For the first time in the history of mankind had recorded gravitational waves — fluctuations in space-time, who came to Earth from the disaster that had occurred far across the Universe. Contribution to the opening of the Russian scientists. On Thursday, the researchers tell about his discovery around the world — in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and other cities, including in Moscow. What scientists have found, can learn from the broadcast of the Department of science “Газеты.Ru”.

20.00

Scientists from many countries continue to celebrate the discovery of gravitational waves, predicted by albert Einstein 100 years ago and became the most important confirmation of his theory of relativity. Experts believe that this discovery is the main contender for the Nobel prize in physics this year.
The Department of science “Газеты.Ru” celebrating scientist joins and completes online streaming. Thank you for being with us!

Физики всего мира празднуют открытие гравитационных волн

19.50

“Einstein would be very happy,” said Gabriella Gonzalez, a representative of the LIGO collaboration. Her words quoted by The New York Times.

19.43

“Scientists have searched for gravitational waves more than a decade, but only now in our disposal there were incredibly accurate technology, which could catch a very very very faint echoes from space”, says Professor Karsten Danzmann, Director of the Institute for gravitational physics, max Planck Society and Director at the University of Hannover Leibniz.

19.35

“In 1992, the approval of funding of LIGO project became the largest investment ever made by the national science Foundation, USA, says France córdova, Director of the Foundation. — It was a big risk. But the national science Foundation is an Agency that is willing to take risks of this kind. We support fundamental research and development on all the way, until, as the opening will be made and the path becomes quite clear. We support the pioneers”.

19.31

Russian scientists finish a press conference.

19.30

Physicists report that the measurement data clearly indicate that the sources of gravitational waves are black hole — which means that they will no longer be considered as hypothetical objects.

19.29

Article about the discovery will be published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Scientists explain this by the fact that the cycle of review articles in this magazine is very fast, which means that publication will happen soon. This explains the fact that the article was not submitted to Science or Nature.

19.25

The discovery was made during the engineering of the cycle of operation of the equipment (calibration work). This means that the detection of gravity waves has occurred prior to science run, scientists say.

19.22

“Similar signals were observed after 14 September, but with much lower intensity. Now there is a check — all must be very sure to check,” continues Valery Mitrofanov.

19.19

“Gravitational waves does to screened and serve as an important source of information about space — meets Valery Mitrofanov on the question of the importance of this discovery for science. — We will see the sky in diamonds!”

19.17

“What LIGO will do next? First, continue monitoring. Secondly, it is necessary to improve the equipment that was not one registration event per month, and much more” — summed Valery Mitrofanov.

19.15

“Quartz is really rustles less,” — says Valery Mitrofanov, the choice of material for mirrors used in LIGO. This explains why quartz is better sapphire.

19.12

“With this discovery for us, the people, the beginning of a new great adventure: the search for and study of the distorted directions of the Universe of objects and phenomena that are built of curved space-time. Colliding black holes and gravitational waves — our first beautiful specimens,” says Kip Thorne, an astrophysicist, one of the founders of LIGO.

19.08

“This observation is beautifully described in the General theory of relativity formulated 100 years ago and represents a first test of the theory in strong gravity. It would be great to see the face of Einstein, if we could get him to inform,” says Rainer Weiss, one of the founders of the LIGO project.

19.02

“This is an outstanding achievement that opens a new direction of gravitational wave astronomy — demanded the implementation of a major project a broad international collaboration of scientists, says Igor Bilenko, Professor of chair of physics of oscillations, Moscow state University. It is very important and it is noteworthy that the fundamental discoveries made by great Russian scientist Vladimir Borisovich Braginsky and his colleagues, quantum limits, methods of quantum measurements and quantum fluctuations — was necessary and essential in this project.”

18.58

Gravitational waves carry information about their origin and drama about the nature of gravity that cannot be obtained any other way. Physics came to the conclusion that the observed gravity waves were generated by two black holes in the last seconds that they merge to form one more massive rotating black hole.

18.56

In such a catastrophe occur gravitational waves:

18.53

On the question of whether now, after years of searching, to say that the gravitational waves finally opened, Valery Mitrofanov says: “It’s not such a simple story… But Yes, they are open, no doubt!”

18.51

“For the first time in the world were flying the waves of the curvature of space, is opening a new era of gravitational wave astronomy,” commented a Professor of physical faculty of Moscow state University Sergey Vyatchanin.

18.46

Valery Mitrofanov, Professor of the physical faculty of Moscow state University. M. V. Lomonosov Moscow state University, says that gravitational waves on the Earth cause very small perturbations. The LIGO detectors are found relative fluctuations of pairs of test masses separated by 4 km, a value of 10 -19 m (this is as many times smaller than the atom, what an atom is less than Apple).

18.42

The Washington scientists have shown a video that showed how under the action of gravitational waves flattened, and ranges the Earth, which caused a noticeable revival of the public. Scientists explained that this was an exaggerated representation of a real process of change in linear dimensions of objects under the action of the waves.

18.40

On the basis of the observed signals LIGO scientists estimate that the black holes involved in the event, had a mass in 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun, and the event took place 1.3 billion years ago. For a split second about three solar masses into gravitational waves, the maximum radiation power was about 50 times greater than that of the entire visible Universe.

At 18.38

Gravitational waves were recorded on September 14, 2015 at 5:51 am North American Eastern summer time (13:51 Moscow time) on two detectors of the twin Laser interferometer gravitational-wave Observatory LIGO.

18.36

The representative of the collaboration LIGO David Ritz reported that gravitational waves were discovered!

18.32

American physicists announced how the collaboration started: project LIGO was founded in 1992, and observations of the Observatory began in 2002.

18.30

Starts the live video press conference from Washington.

18.25

Rumors about the discovery of gravitational waves began to spread after in September launched the upgraded detectors of the Observatory. It was reported that the detectors lab in the USA managed to secure the passage of one or more of gravitational waves. I wrote about this in his microblog on Twitter famous cosmologist from Arizona state University Lawrence Krauss. However, the press service of LIGO did not then confirm his message.

18.15

From all gravitational telescopes operating on Earth, has the greatest sensitivity located in the U.S. laser interferometer gravitational-wave Observatory LIGO. This Observatory consists of two l-shaped systems, formed by two shoulders 4 km each. The gravitational wave has the property to change the metric — this means that, once on the device, it will change the arm length of each of the systems, and a laser interferometer detects the change.
System LIGO-spaced on 3002 km In the detection of gravitational waves propagating, according to General relativity, the speed of light, this distance will give the delay in registration of the signal within 10 milliseconds, which allows to determine the direction to the source of the wave. One of the systems is in Livingston, and one in Hanford.

18.05

If General relativity is correct and that gravitational waves do exist, then the strongest and most frequent sources of accident are associated with collapses of massive binary systems in nearby galaxies, such as colliding black holes or neutron stars. When you rotate around a common center of mass this system loses energy through the emission of gravitational waves. This process usually lasts a few million years, and radiation is rather weak. As a result, the objects become closer, and their orbital period decreases. However, at the final stage of collision and unbalanced gravitational collapse. This process lasts a fraction of a second, and during this time, in gravitational radiation — ripples “of space-time” — out the energy component, according to some estimates, more than 50% of the system mass.

17.55

Search of gravitational waves is one of the largest problems of modern physics. According to the General theory of relativity (GR) by albert Einstein, any matter moving with acceleration creates a perturbation of space-time — gravitational wave. This outrage is the greater, the higher the acceleration and the mass of an object. Given the weakness of gravitational forces compared with the other fundamental interactions of these waves must be of extremely small size, difficult registration.

17.45

Good evening, dear readers! The Department of science “Газеты.Ru” starting online broadcast press conference of Russian scientists involved in the project to search for gravitational waves. The researchers are members of the LIGO collaboration (LSC — LIGO Scientific Collaboration), a collective of more than a thousand scientists from universities in 15 countries. Russia is represented by two research teams: group of physical faculty of Moscow state University. M. V. Lomonosov and of the Institute for applied physics RAS (Nizhny Novgorod).

The discovery of gravitational waves and a new era of astronomy: comments by the Russian physicists

February 11, 2016 will go down in history. On this day there was one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the recent time is the discovery of gravitational waves, predicted almost a hundred years ago the General theory of relativity of albert Einstein. The ripples on the surface of space-time that distorts space and time around himself, came to Earth and was first directly registered.

“We are opening a new era — the era of gravitational wave astronomy. This can be compared with the advent of the telescope, or astronomy. We have a new tool for the study of the Universe,” said one of the participants in the project LIGO, the head of group “Coherent micro and believe that radio Photonics” Russian quantum center (RCC) Mikhail Gorodetsky.

International project LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), laser-interferometric gravitational-wave Observatory, was launched in 1992 and now involves scientists from 15 countries. Since the beginning of the experiments, participated in the Russian physics, including the scientific group under the guidance of Professor of physical faculty of Moscow state University Valery Mitrofanov.

Today Valery Mitrofanov and other prominent Russian physicists participated in the press conference, which spoke in detail about the opening. Below is the video of the press conference. Professor Mitrofanov of the first acts, first he commented in a live broadcast from Washington. It was officially announced sensational news, rumors of which went for a few weeks.

Then Valery Mitrofanov himself explained briefly the technical side, how did the experiment:

“Caught a signal from two black holes that are from us on distance about 1.3 billion light years. Holes revolving around each other and eventually merged into one. About gravitational waves that signaled the surge, which was recorded by detectors. It is important to emphasize that this direct detection of the waves, and not indirect. For indirect in 1993 was awarded the Nobel prize. Detectors got a signal at 10 degree minus 19 meters. Today that limit the accuracy of the measurement, which still managed to achieve on the Ground.

With regard to the contribution of Russian scientists, is, first of all, the creation of systems that allow us to separate such weak signals in background noise. The problem is, quite frankly, daunting”.

Black hole had the mass of about 30 Solar masses each, and revolved around each other with a frequency of 150 Hz. Mass after fusion was at three solar mass less than the sum of the masses before the merger: the remaining energy was emitted in form of gravitational waves.

When he reached the Earth, the gravitational waves began to distort our space-time. Accordingly, the beginning to periodically change the distance between the antennas elements of the LIGO Observatory that registered the detectors of the laser beams.

Gravitational waves were recorded on September 14, 2015 at 13:51 Moscow time.

“This is the ultimate achievement of human civilization, said Professor of Moscow state University Sergey Vyatchanin. — LIGO almost reached the quantum limit of measurements. Managed to register the displacement of two macroscopic objects with a mass of several kilograms and separated by several kilometers with an accuracy predicted by the quantum uncertainty of Heisenberg”.

“Now we have only two detectors, but even with them we can determine the masses of objects, and time-delay — estimate their approximate position in the sky, said one of the authors of discoveries, scientific Director of the Russian quantum center, Moscow state University Professor Mikhail Gorodetsky. For two antennas the localization is not very good — some arc in the sky, but when fully operational the third European gravitational antenna, the method of triangulation we can determine the position of the source accurately enough”.
Физики всего мира празднуют открытие гравитационных волн
L-shaped antenna and the LIGO Observatory in Louisiana

By the way, Russian physicists have proposed to hang the mirror on quartz fibres instead of steel (the laser beams reflected from the mirrors in each shoulder four-kilometer-long l-shaped interferometer), thereby reducing extraneous noise in the system. Without this opening would not be possible.

Video of the press conference
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