Uncovering the Truth: Examining the Existence of Gravitational Waves

[Garth]

Our understanding of short GRBs is extremely crude and any failure to detect such a signal would almost certainly be due to a failure in those models, not in our theory of gravity. Given the high-quality data that came from PSR 1913+16, the only way you'll see astronomers/physicists seriously questioning the existence of gravitational waves is if we point our detectors at a source that we know is above our threshold of sensitivity and get no detection.

Agreed - but when (how many more years) will our theshold of detection increase in sensitivity to below the predicted signal from known sources?

Garth

 

[Stingray]

Agreed - but when (how many more years) will our theshold of detection increase in sensitivity to below the predicted signal from known sources?
Garth

As I've stated in these forums several times, most people would be quite surprised if any of the current detectors found anything in the next few years.

Upgrades to LIGO are expected to start being built in 2008, and observations should start around 2013. These will increase the sensitivity by a factor of 10, which is expected to be sufficient to make a detection within a year or two (at worst). If nothing is found by then, people will start to worry.

 

[Garth]

As I've stated in these forums several times, most people would be quite surprised if any of the current detectors found anything in the next few years.
Upgrades to LIGO are expected to start being built in 2008, and observations should start around 2013. These will increase the sensitivity by a factor of 10, which is expected to be sufficient to make a detection within a year or two (at worst). If nothing is found by then, people will start to worry.

Thank you, that is what I wanted to know!

Garth