Much has been said about the discovery of gravitational waves and, honestly, I don’t have much more to contribute to what anyone can find out by consulting news, press releases, press releases and scientific articles.
However, I do want to put a few highlights on some interesting facts and anecdotes that I think have been overshadowed by this impressive discovery.
1. The discovery has a Spanish signature
It is the UIB Relativity and Gravitation Group of the University of the Balearic Islands . During the frenzy of the discovery, it was members of this group who initially alerted the rest of their colleagues, both at the Livingston and Hanford observatories.
2. A good part of the verification calculations also have a Spain mark
These complex mathematical operations for filtering data and executing cosmological models were carried out on the MareNostrum supercomputer at the Barcelona Super Computing Center . These calculations require several tens of thousands of cores, housed under the dome of the Torre Girona chapel.
3. For a fraction of a second we were higher and then lower
The gravitational wave (or also called GW150914 from the date of its detection) produced a series of contractions and expansions of space-time and of the Earth approximately the diameter of an atomic nucleus. Of course, we are included in this 0.05 second swing.
4. The LIGO experiment is possibly the most accurate sensor ever built by man
Certainly, something capable of detecting changes of 1/100000 parts of a nanometer can be considered the most accurate measuring ruler imaginable. It consists in turn of the most monochromatic laser, the best polished mirrors and the vacuum system … more “emptied” of the Earth .
5. A paranoid experiment
The LIGO experiment has an autonomous system for generating false negatives . In other words, artificial “injections” of data are provoked that apparently account for relevant events but are actually completely false . These measurements alterations are completely foreign to the experiment and the project scientists, hence they are called “blind injections” .
What is the objective of this apparently paranoid operation? Well, very simple. With these self-delusions and this self-imposed “blindness” to them , researchers are trained and even more alert . Also, in the public eye , it is a way of showing that, come the day when a real gravitational wave was detected, everything possible had previously been done to ensure its authenticity . These erroneous sequences are introduced by slight movements of the mirrors that make up the detector . That is to say, they are physical injections (or “by hardware”) and not simulations by software (which could be branded as easily piratable).
6. There was another gravitational wave
Yes, there was another gravitational wave of less intensity two months later (G197392) but due to its low intensity, it was not given the scientific relevance that it played.
7. The detection of the GW150914 was almost a fluke
Yes, actually version 2 of the LIGO or “Advanced LIGO” detectors (which was the one that actually detected the GW150914) began to be operational a few days before the detection of the first gravitational wave. If these renewed experiments had been “turned on” just a few days later, I would not be writing these lines and the reader would not be reading them. The LIGO experiment in its previous versions did not detect anything.
8. You can also collaborate
Thanks to the Einstein @ Home project, you can assign part of your computer’s calculation time for the necessary analyzes related to the data collected in LIGO. You can consult these anecdotes daily and as a funny comic in the LIGO experiment magazine itself.
Alberto Corbi is a professor at the Higher School of Engineering and Technology (ESIT) of the International University of La Rioja (UNIR).
