Will the discovery of gravity waves solve any of humanities' problems?

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   Oztinatoposted 9 years ago

   Will the discovery of gravity waves solve any of humanities' problems?
   
   Gravity waves have existed forever. Will their discovery feed the poor or alleviate human suffering?

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   bradmasterOCcalposted 9 years ago

   I don't see any reason why they would be able to do that.
   I think that the existing technology could do that, but they are ignored because of a number of reasons, including profit, cost, and other things that are important to businesses.

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   m abdullah javedposted 9 years ago

   The discovery has lead to a new branch of space exploration the gravitational wave astronomy. As off now we can say that the discovery is going to help us know the universe even better and hence the world around.
   With a hope of increasing sensitivity of LIGO in the days to come we expect many more detections and startling revelations about gravitational waves, black holes and neutron stars. We can hope for the betterment of humanity too but for that we need to understand the phenomenon even better. You know that the discovery of radio waves helped us scale new heights in the field of telecommunications, we can expect the same with this sensational discovery.

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      Oztinatoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Will they build an instrument tuned to gravity waves to "see" things?

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      m abdullah javedposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Oz, advanced LIGO and Virgo took years in designing the sensitivity and couldn't see anything till recently. That would only mean the rate of astrophysical events is very low. We need to wait for some more time.

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      Oztinatoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Surely the universe is full of such events? Some reports claim this latest discovery dates from the big bang

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      m abdullah javedposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah exactly Oz, it dates back to some 1.3 billion years. Amazing!

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      Oztinatoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Doesn't that mean the waves should be seen everywhere?

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      m abdullah javedposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      No that particular phenomenon got over, based on that observation we will be able to explore further discoveries. In fact in the whole of universe explosion and unification of giant objects take place, we hope of getting the details in near future.

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      Oztinatoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      So do gravity waves cause gravity? I'm justt trying to keep up with the theory. Was gravity released during the big banv as another kind of wave?

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      m abdullah javedposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Gravitational Waves cause gravitational radiations. As far Big Bang theory, this latest discovery is hope of knowing it even better. The present knowledge about the theory is that the solar system was a resultant of the big explosion.

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      Oztinatoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Yes we all know about the big bang. I'm not sure why these are gravity waves and not just good old ripples in "time/space".

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       m abdullah javedposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       Yes, gravity waves are the ripples in the curvature of spacetime.

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       Oztinatoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       But haven't we known about those ripples for yonks? Aren't those ripples used as "lenses" to see further away already?

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       m abdullah javedposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       About a century ago we learnt of these ripples, but thought of them to be undetectable, however the advancement in the field and development of a highly sensitive instrument help detect the ripples.This discovery will help us see further.

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   M. T. Dremerposted 9 years ago

   It won't solve all of them. But, potentially, it could solve our biggest problem: our own self destruction. The existence of gravity waves enhances the potential for utilizing different forms of space travel. And, if we can figure out short-cuts through space, we can find other hospitable worlds. Granted, that kind of paints us as the villains of the universe (going from planet to planet, using up its resources) but if we want our species to survive, we need to move beyond Earth.

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   lawrence01posted 9 years ago

   Oz
   No they won't feed the hungry! What they are doing is showing us the Einstein was right that time and space are dimensions in our universe.
   We're getting close to the point that the Earth may soon not be able to feed all of humanity (we're at 7billion people and 'the point of no return' is thought to be 9 billion which is expected to be reached around 2050!)
   Putting it bluntly we need somewhere to put humanity's extras!
   Most of our system will take a great amount of work to make habitable, gravity waves give us a clue as to how we might be able to reach across the huge distances and literally "go see" if there are places where Humanity might build a future! (If we can harness them then we might be able to use gravity to 'warp' time/space as Einstein predicted to travel to distant stars without breaking the theory of relativity!
   Sounds crazy? But NASA have been working on the theory for about five years

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      Oztinatoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Hope they all get a move on sooner rather than later

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      lawrence01posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Whenever Humanity solves one problem, we create two more! We solved some problems regarding ageing and health only to create 'haves, have nots' and overpopulation!
      Come back Jesus (please!)

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