On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 07:05:56 GMT, "Androcles"
wrote:


"dkomo" wrote in message
news | I found an old PBS documentary on VHS from 1991 called _The Astronomers_
| at the local public library. One of the programs in the series was
| "Waves of the Future" about gravitational waves. In the program Kip
| Thorne was shown making a bet with one of his collaborators on gravity
| wave theory that these waves would positively be detected by 2000.
|
| I found this both humorous and a touch sad. The program described some
| of the early planning for LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave
| Observatory). Curious, I went to the LIGO web site to see what was
| going on. I found nothing of substance there -- just a lot of slick PR.
|
| So my question is, what are the prospects that gravity waves will be
| detected anytime soon?

Why not consider the biggest "wave" or pulse in our galaxy imaginable?
That would correspond to ALL the mass of a star entirely disappearing, as
could just conceivably happen if the star were converted to entirely to
energy
in one enormous supernova. We'd see a brilliant flash of EM radiation,
brighter than daylight, but the entire gravity would be gone.

[snip]

No, EM radiation gravitates too.

Do you know what the stress-energy tensor is? How about the
theoretical construct called a geon?