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Gravity Wave Sensors
| Article
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11953 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1987 |
4,508 Words |
| Author
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Ron Cowen
Ron Cowen is a free-lance science writer who resides in Takoma
Park, Maryland. |
Thirty thousand years ago, somewhere in deep space, havoc reigned. Stars exploded, leaving behind only dust or a burned out, collapsed core. Massive objects so dense a cup full of their matter would weigh a million tons crashed head on, twisting space itself and churning out complex torrents of diverse forms of energy, including the full electromagnetic spectrum - from ultrashort gamma rays to ultralong radio waves. Other stars, coupled by their intense gravitational pull, whipped around each other at nearly the speed of light, emitting flashes of energy like a lighthouse beacon.
At a speed of 186,282 miles per second, these bursts of energy spread out in all directions. Thirty thousand years later, some of them fell on our small cluster of planets tucked away at the edge of the Milky Way.
On earth today, scientists trap and analyze these signals to understand the cataclysmic events from which they arose. Mile-long dish-shaped antennas monitor radio waves, mirrored telescopes monitor visible light, and satellite-carried sensors monitor the many types of radiation that do not penetrate the earth's protective atmosphere. The masses of data accumulated by all of these means provide vital information on the birth and evolution of the universe. But all of these radiations, originating only from the surface of stars and easily obscured by dust clouds and other cosmic debris, cannot tell the whole story.
To plumb the depths of massive stars and the bulk motion of heavy objects, researches hunt for a more enigmatic form of energy: the gravitational wave. Predicted by Albert Einstein in 1918, gravity waves would pass through turbulent gases and dust clouds as if they were plate glass, allowing perhaps for the first time a clear view of the dusty center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Gravity waves left over from the early universe might tell us what the world looked like a mere 10^-43 seconds after its birth.
Although a nearly 30-year search has turned up scant evidence for their existence, gravity waves have lured an increasing number of researchers to the hunt. Part of the challenge is the weakness of the signal - a gravity wave impinging on a detector might move it by as little as a millionth of the diameter of a proton, or 10^-20 meter. Today's most sophisticated detectors, which can sense motions as small as one part in 10^-18 can barely pick up such signals. But, as researchers around the globe use new technology to hone old instruments, build sensitive laser monitoring systems, and test designs for a 600,000-mile-long
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