Useful little site for anyone interested in Science..

[packtech]

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1853

Fill yer boots.

 

[Whaleblue]

Nice. Thanks.

 

[SteveT]

Excellent. Very succinct and easy to understand.

 

[cooky1257]

thanks.

 

[gassor]

Much appreciated.

 

[foursticks]

Thanks for the link.

 

[wino2020]

Well, yes. But by definition we must be surrounded by gravitational waves. So how do the scientists know exactly what event produced them? Or, to use an analogy, were the sea waves of Storm Gertrude so different from Storm Henry that they could be identified from their form ,with no other clues? Or am I just a Philistine?

 

[droodzilla]

Well, yes. But by definition we must be surrounded by gravitational waves. So how do the scientists know exactly what event produced them? Or, to use an analogy, were the sea waves of Storm Gertrude so different from Storm Henry that they could be identified from their form ,with no other clues? Or am I just a Philistine?

I don't know but here's the paper that reports the discovery:

http://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102

Actually, in principle, I expect this is no more complicated than knowing where Venus is in the night sky. Answer: it's over there (because we can see it). Think of LIGO as just another telescope that just happens to be fine tuned to detect a rather special, and hitherto undetected, signal.

 

[droodzilla]

Looking at the paper:

With only two detectors the source position is primarily determined by the relative arrival time and localized to an area of approximately 600 deg^2 (90% credible region)

So, basically, two detectors + a process of triangulation.