[ExI] Gravitational Waves Detected By LIGO!

[John Clark]

On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Tomaz Kristan <protokol2020 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>> ​>​
>>  The strain produced by the waves decays with 1/r. Tidal forces are
>> proportional to 1/r^3 so they decay very fast as you move away from the
>> source.
>
>
> ​>​
> It's then either G-wave originated 10^9 ly away, or some tidal effect 10^3
> ly away. Like a neutron star inner collapse to a black hole, for example.
> ​ ​
> Those two are indistinguishable for LIGO, I presume
> ​.​
>
>
One way LIGO can distinguish a gravitational wave from other sources of
distortion of the mirrors is that if it's a
​ ​
gravitational
​ ​
wave then as one leg of the L shaped LIGO
​ ​
detector
​ ​
shrinks the other must expand
​ ​
by the same amount; and if it were caused by tidal forces something would
have to be circling the Earth 250 times a second. And
​nothing can be in orbit around the ​
Earth like that.

​ John K Clark​
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