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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'> extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>John Clark<br><b>Sent:</b> Thursday, February 11, 2016 12:36 PM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] Gravitational Waves Detected By LIGO!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'>On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 2:29 PM, spike <<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" target="_blank">spike66@att.net</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>></span>><span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span> back in the early 90s, when Kip Thorne and Drever and those guys were setting up LIGO, there were good arguments at the time, some with pretty convincing-looking equations in refereed papers, that GWs would never be detected with that technology. As I recall, the argument was that the interferometry techniques couldn’t get sufficient resolution to see GWs, which those same papers agreed are there.<o:p></o:p></p></div></blockquote><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>And the critics were correct, the old <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>LIGO wasn't sensitive enough to detect gravitational waves unless you were unrealistically lucky and 2 black holes happened to merge very near to Earth , but after LEGO big upgrade it could detect when the distance between 2 mirrors 2 and a half miles away changed by only 10^-18 meters (less than one thousandth the width of a proton) and that was good enough to get the job done. John K Clark<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></span></p></div></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Cool thanks John. After struggling to grasp Thorne’s book I didn’t revisit the topic and didn’t realize they had upgraded those instruments.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Do you know of any reliable sources regarding what happens to biomes if gravity waves are formed nearby? I had kinda envisioned it as like ants in the microwave: they don’t seem to notice. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Here’s one for you, since I am drifting off the topic anyway: ants do die in the microwave, if you put them on the outside of a turntable. You need to have them in something so they don’t just wander away. I haven’t tried it with other beasts, but don’t bother contacting SPCA, they don’t care about bugs. They might as well call it SPCM because they think anything that isn’t a mammal isn’t an animal. Silly persons.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>