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Pretty damn close but not quite zero, which attests to the incredible precision of our instrument/s. Same sort of accuracy and precision was necessary with the GP-B experiment. The way I see it is that if spacetime can warp, twist and curve in the presence of mass, then why not wave?

Science is a discipline in eternal progress. Theories are formulated to explain observation and experimental results. Theories do grow in certainty over time, and as they continue to successfully predict and explain observational data. While that continues, scientists then proceed under the assumption that it is correct: I see that aligning with common sense and logic. Philosophy imo lays down the ground rules for science. Science is the hands on approach. Some great science and philosophy quotes here....... https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sciquote.htm What I will say is that if it weren't for science, we would still be swinging in the trees.

Remember man that thou art star dust, and unto star dust thou shalt return. In answer to your question thou, no.

I highlighted one word in post 174......"Assuming" And that was In reply to your incorrect statement that WIKI talks about it "like an accepted fact".

Yes, just as Ocean waves are also "waves of the Ocean itself" It appears your interpretation itself is wrong. It imo is manifestly wrong, to say that GW's, or ripples of the spacetime, [not space] will not affect two arms at right angles to each other differently. eg: If GW's were of greater magnitude, and one passed through me, I would appear stretched in one direction and squashed in the other...likewise at any one particular moment in time, one of the arms will appear longer [as judged by the laser] then the other arm. I'm at a loss how you can see it any differently. You do have it over me then in that regard...I'm just a poor old retired Maintenance Fitter and Machinist. But one who has read up a fair bit on this subject and others associated with it. All jokes aside, why not write or E-Mail aLIGO and ask for their opinion.

I find the belief in any God, is really a cushioning and comfy thingy. It hides from the believer the fact that in essence, we and the whole universe are just an accident of evolution, that was bound to take effect at least once and probably many more times, based on the near infinite content and extent of the universe/spacetime, stars, planets etc.

And so far the BB, and GR have done OK....... But by the same token, most any young up and coming physicist, would dearly love to show that Einstein's work was limited and to find a valid model that extended beyond the BB and GR: In fact they are trying to do this everyday.

Point taken. A couple of things......Firstly, it points to the fact that the "stuff of life," just like all the elements, is spread throughout the universe, and that life elsewhere, has the potential to arise and evolve....secondly, the very early universe would not have been hospitable for life...or at least life as we know it. Do others agree?

Until we have a better model that predicts more accurately, and matches observations more closely, and explains the anomalies that require DE and DM without invoking the same, then it is the best we have.

I don't believe WIKI does talk about it like an accepted fact. Both DM and DE are "probable explanations" to explain some anomalies in the standard model. If the standard model is correct, then certainly we need DE [whatever that may be] to explain accelerated expansion, and we need DM to explain anomalies in observed rotational curves of galaxies. Although as yet the exact nature of DE and DM is still a mystery, it does not invalidate the overall large scale picture of the present day standard model, which still aligns with plenty of observational and experimental evidence. Are they wrong? That as yet remains to be seen.

A great rundown on tidal locking and synchronous rotation in WIKI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking extract: "This state can result from the gravitational gradient (tidal force) between two co-orbiting bodies, acting over a sufficiently long period of time"

Probably to explain the observed acceleration in the expansion rate? I thought that was common knowledge, Let me sum it up for you in an extract from a reply I received from a Professor Isi from the aLIGO laboratory......... "This is because natural language is too ambiguous to express formal statements: GR (as every other physical theory) is a mathematical framework and we need mathematics to discuss it properly. This is evident when you consider how both quantum mechanics and special relativity are full of paradoxes that seem to point to contradictions that go away when expressed mathematically. Paradoxes point to the inadequacies of our intuitions, not to those of the theory".

Yep, that's the way I understand it and I'm sure most understand it that have any interest in cosmology and GR. No, obviously the arms being at right angles to each other, will be affected differently as peaks and troughs pass through and obviously also then, the distance the laser has had to travel. So you are claiming everyone else is wrong including probably the world's authority on BH's Kip Thorne? So then obviously your next step is to gather all the evidence you have supporting your hypothesis, and submitting a paper for professional peer review. Let us know how you go. On another forum I once frequented, we also had one who was insisting that GW's as discovered, were not as reported and also his even more dramatic claims that GR was wrong, period! During plenty of debate with this joker by other knowledgable people on that forum, I decided to get it from the horses mouth so to speak. I E-Mailed aLIGO and received the following reply......... Dear Barry, My name is Maximiliano Isi and I am a member of the LIGO Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. I also happen to be the author of one of the papers cited at the end of your message. Thank you for your interesting email and apologies for the belated reply. It is absolutely true that our observations do not allow us to fully rule out the existence of non-GR physics. This is just a consequence of the fact that experimental observations have the power to disprove theories, but not to prove them: scientific theories are falsifiable, but not demonstrable. The best we can do is to say that our measurements agree with GR up to some (high) confidence level. It is in that precise sense that we mean "Einstein was right" (a misleading phrase: we don't know whether GR is fully accurate, we just cannot prove it wrong with what we have seen). We have several methods to make quantitative statements about the agreement between the GR prediction and the signals we measure, but I won't describe them here in detail. Note that in order to find signals in the detector noise we use templates that tell us what the waves look like, and those templates are the output of highly–advanced super-computer simulations of GR dynamics; this means that the signal cannot be too different from the GR prediction or we wouldn't have seen it at all! Now, agreement with GR is not exclusive: an alternative theory might explain our observation just as well as GR or even better. Given any two competing theories (with different predictions), we can always ask which one is favored by our data, and we have well-established statistical methods to make quantitative statements to answer. Unfortunately, however, the mathematics of GW emission and propagation has only been worked out for very few of the viable alternatives to GR and in most of those cases the theories are similar enough to GR that the signals we'd expect to see are practically indistinguishable. The reason for this is that computing GW waveforms for interesting sources is an extremely complicated mathematical problem and (as mentioned above) it takes super-computers to do it even in GR, the theory we know best (and most alternatives are intrinsically more complicated). So far this has all been about the relation between theory and experiment. However, most of the text in your message alluded to potential logical inconsistencies within GR itself. Since the main point relies on a thought experiment, let me begin to address this by clarifying that, although thought experiments can be a very useful tool, they are not proper logical arguments in themselves and do not formally tell us anything about the the validity of a theory. This is because natural language is too ambiguous to express formal statements: GR (as every other physical theory) is a mathematical framework and we need mathematics to discuss it properly. This is evident when you consider how both quantum mechanics and special relativity are full of paradoxes that seem to point to contradictions that go away when expressed mathematically. Paradoxes point to the inadequacies of our intuitions, not to those of the theory. That said, I'd like to point out a few potential flaws in the argument presented in your email, without actually going into mathematical detail: First, Feynman's sticky bead argument played an important role in re-igniting interest in GWs at a point in history when it wasn't clear whether they were real at all; however, the argument is not a core part of the GR framework and is usually not even referred to in modern treatments of the topic—our understanding of GR has come a long way since the 50's! Second, our intuitions about space and time do not jive well with GR. Because spacetime can be curved, the fact that circumference of the loop in the example decreases does not say much about the radius. For example, imagine you went in a circle around a massive object (say, Sun) and measured the distance travelled (call it c, for circumference), and then travelled radially inwards towards the center and measured that distance too (call it r, for radius), then you would find that c < 2*pi*r because the massive body curve the spacetime around it. This is all to say that a shrinking circumference does not imply a shrinking radius (at least not in all frames). Third and last, it seems to be implied in the text you quote that the existence of longitudinal gravitational waves would be in conflict with GR; however, this is only true in a narrow sense that needs to be explained. According to GR, at any point in space-time one should be able to find a particular form of the GW equations (the technical term for this freedom in the eqs. is gauge, think of it as a frame of reference though it's not the same) in which the wave can be expressed as the combination of two independent polarizations transverse to the direction of propagation. Notice some key aspects of this statement: there is a specific choice of gauge (or frame of reference, if you wish) in which the equations take this particularly nice form, and that choice can only be defined locally (i.e. a choice that works nicely in one point in space, will be bad somewhere else). This means that if you choose an arbitrary frame of reference, chances are the wave will not look transverse, though you could always switch to the specific frame and gauge which will make the waves look nice at that point (this is the so called transverse-traceless gauge). The bottom line is that you might think that you have longitudinal waves, but you can always explain that as a combination of independent, transverse waves. Finally, I would like to add a few words about Carver Mead's G4v theory. Unlike most alternatives to GR, Carver's theory makes markedly different predictions than GR with respect to the polarization content of GWs. However, the relative orientation of our detectors makes LIGO not really good at distinguishing different polarizations in transient (short-lived) signals like the ones we have observed so far. Furthermore, we don't have a full prediction of what the GW trace of the merger of two compact objects would look like in G4v (Carver is working on it), so we cannot make a statement about which theory, if any, is favored by the data. So we will have to wait for more detections and more theoretical work until we are able to make a statement about G4v. Once again, thank you very much for a very thought-provoking email and for your interest in LIGO and gravitational waves in general. By all means, do let me know if you would like me to clarify any of the points above or if you have any questions. Best, Maximiliano Isi-------------------- California Institute of Technology LIGO Laboratory, MC 100-36 Pasadena, CA 9112 5

I found the following article and paper............... https://phys.org/news/2017-06-galaxies-violent.html An international team of researchers has shown that the hot diffuse gas that fills the space between the galaxies has the same concentration of iron in all galaxy clusters that were studied in sufficient detail by the Japanese Suzaku satellite. It seems that most of the iron inside the intergalactic gas arose long before the first clusters of galaxies were formed. The results will be presented this Friday at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society, EWASS2017, in Prague, Czech Republic by Norbert Werner, leader of the MTA-Eötvös University Lendület "Hot universe" research group in Budapest, Hungary and associate professor at the Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and Hiroshima University in Japan. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-galaxies-violent.html#jCp The paper...... https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.01567.pdf A uniform metallicity in the outskirts of massive, nearby galaxy clusters ABSTRACT Suzaku measurements of a homogeneous metal distribution of Z ∼ 0.3 Solar in the outskirts of the nearby Perseus cluster suggest that chemical elements were deposited and mixed into the intergalactic medium before clusters formed, likely over 10 billion years ago. A key prediction of this early enrichment scenario is that the intracluster medium in all massive clusters should be uniformly enriched to a similar level. Here, we confirm this prediction by determining the iron abundances in the outskirts (r > 0.25r200) of a sample of ten other nearby galaxy clusters observed with Suzaku for which robust measurements based on the Fe-K lines can be made. Across our sample the iron abundances are consistent with a constant value, ZFe = 0.316 ± 0.012 Solar (χ 2 = 28.85 for 25 degrees of freedom). This is remarkably similar to the measurements for the Perseus cluster of ZFe = 0.314±0.012 Solar, using the Solar abundance scale of Asplund et al. (2009). ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: The above paper details the findings of metallicity measurements in the outskirts of ten nearby galaxy clusters: Interesting article and paper......

The following article and discovery seems to support the idea that the potential for life was/is widespread throughout the universe. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-prebiotic-atmosphere-accretion-disk-baby.html An international research team, led by Chin-Fei Lee of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA, Taiwan), has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect complex organic molecules for the first time in the atmosphere of an accretion disk around a very young protostar. These molecules play a crucial role in producing the rich organic chemistry needed for life. The discovery suggests that the building blocks of life are produced in such disks at the very beginning of star formation and that they are available to be incorporated into planets that form in the disk subsequently. It could help us understand how life came to be on Earth. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-prebiotic-atmosphere-accretion-disk-baby.html#jCp The paper...... http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aa7757/meta;jsessionid=49EEAE1716F89340D9241B645FD1C954.c4.iopscience.cld.iop.org Formation and Atmosphere of Complex Organic Molecules of the HH 212 Protostellar Disk AbstractHH 212 is a nearby (400 pc) Class 0 protostellar system recently found to host a "hamburger"-shaped dusty disk with a radius of ~60 au, deeply embedded in an infalling-rotating flattened envelope. We have spatially resolved this envelope-disk system with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at up to ~16 au (004) resolution. The envelope is detected in HCO+ J = 4–3 down to the dusty disk. Complex organic molecules (COMs) and doubly deuterated formaldehyde (D2CO) are detected above and below the dusty disk within ~40 au of the central protostar. The COMs are methanol (CH3OH), deuterated methanol (CH2DOH), methyl mercaptan (CH3SH), and formamide (NH2CHO, a prebiotic precursor). We have modeled the gas kinematics in HCO+ and COMs and found a centrifugal barrier (CB) at a radius of ~44 au, within which a Keplerian rotating disk is formed. This indicates that HCO+ traces the infalling-rotating envelope down to the CB and COMs trace the atmosphere of a Keplerian rotating disk within the CB. The COMs are spatially resolved for the first time, both radially and vertically, in the atmosphere of a disk in the earliest, Class 0 phase of star formation. Our spatially resolved observations of COMs favor their formation in the disk rather than a rapidly infalling (warm) inner envelope. The abundances and spatial distributions of the COMs provide strong constraints on models of their formation and transport in low-mass star formation.

And you would be wrong. Science simply constructs models that match what we observe and the result of our experiments as close as possible...Or if you like, as close to reality as possible. These models and theories grow in certainty over time, and as they continue to successfully predict, and continue to match new observations. This so called deeper reality you are talking about may not exist, and may be unobtainable anyway: If science does happen to hit upon it, then all well and good. Speaking and searching for that is philosophy, plain and simple.

Just came across an Interesting article.......... https://phys.org/news/2017-06-prebiotic-atmosphere-accretion-disk-baby.html extract: "An international research team, led by Chin-Fei Lee of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA, Taiwan), has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect complex organic molecules for the first time in the atmosphere of an accretion disk around a very young protostar. These molecules play a crucial role in producing the rich organic chemistry needed for life. The discovery suggests that the building blocks of life are produced in such disks at the very beginning of star formation and that they are available to be incorporated into planets that form in the disk subsequently. It could help us understand how life came to be on Earth". ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: The paper: Abstract HH 212 is a nearby (400 pc) Class 0 protostellar system recently found to host a "hamburger"-shaped dusty disk with a radius of ~60 au, deeply embedded in an infalling-rotating flattened envelope. We have spatially resolved this envelope-disk system with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at up to ~16 au (004) resolution. The envelope is detected in HCO+ J = 4–3 down to the dusty disk. Complex organic molecules (COMs) and doubly deuterated formaldehyde (D2CO) are detected above and below the dusty disk within ~40 au of the central protostar. The COMs are methanol (CH3OH), deuterated methanol (CH2DOH), methyl mercaptan (CH3SH), and formamide (NH2CHO, a prebiotic precursor). We have modeled the gas kinematics in HCO+ and COMs and found a centrifugal barrier (CB) at a radius of ~44 au, within which a Keplerian rotating disk is formed. This indicates that HCO+ traces the infalling-rotating envelope down to the CB and COMs trace the atmosphere of a Keplerian rotating disk within the CB. The COMs are spatially resolved for the first time, both radially and vertically, in the atmosphere of a disk in the earliest, Class 0 phase of star formation. Our spatially resolved observations of COMs favor their formation in the disk rather than a rapidly infalling (warm) inner envelope. The abundances and spatial distributions of the COMs provide strong constraints on models of their formation and transport in low-mass star formation. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Outstanding discovery methinks! Any comments from resident experts?

I was lucky enough to see a total solar eclipse in November 2012 at a place called Palm Cove near Cairns in Queensland Northern Australia. I was simply using a shade 10 welding glass. Pretty awe inspiring to say the least, particularly before totality and just after totality. My next item on my bucket list is to see a Annular solar eclipse.

Gravity does not have to get out of a BH...the gravity of a BH is a fossil field from the star/s that originally collapsed to form the BH. Plus of course all gravity is, is spacetime itself...It in itself is the BH. Gravity/spacetime is also nonlinear. And of course the quantized state of gravity/spacetime is still only a hypothetical concept.

Of course you are correct. What would any of is do without medicine for example. And of course advances in cosmology can be traced back to advances in other fields, and vice versa. Still the "awe inspiring" aspect of cosmology/astronomy driven by the sheer size and numbers involved, is of course staggering.

While firstly agreeing that all the sciences are interesting and each beneficial and essential in their own way: all are obviously used to advance mankind, as plain old humans, each of us would have a favourite that he/she sees as most interesting: My vote goes with Astronomy and as an extension Cosmology, Astrophysics........ I am unable to describe it any better then the following quote by the Scottish Astronomer James Furguson “Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is discovered, but our very faculties are enlarged with the grandeur of the ideas it conveys, our minds exalted above their low contracted prejudices.” - James Ferguson I came across that quote here.... http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/universe/201367/cosmic-perspective and a piece by Neil DeGrasse-Tyson...... Cosmic Perspective Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how embracing cosmic realities can enlighten our view of human life. The article begins with the quote in question and..... "Long before anyone knew that the universe had a beginning, before we knew that the nearest large galaxy lies two and a half million light-years from Earth, before we knew how stars work or whether atoms exist, James Ferguson's enthusiastic introduction to his favorite science rang true. Yet his words, apart from their eighteenth-century flourish, could have been written yesterday" and concludes thus....... "The cosmic perspective flows from fundamental knowledge. But it's more than just what you know. It's also about having the wisdom and insight to apply that knowledge to assessing our place in the universe. And its attributes are clear: The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not solely the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone. The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious. The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told. The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place. The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote, but a precious mote and, for the moment, the only home we have. The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them. The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and sex. The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave—an indication that perhaps flag waving and space exploration do not mix. The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself. At least once a week, if not once a day, we might each ponder what cosmic truths lie undiscovered before us, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a clever thinker, an ingenious experiment, or an innovative space mission to reveal them. We might further ponder how those discoveries may one day transform life on Earth. Absent such curiosity, we are no different from the provincial farmer who expresses no need to venture beyond the county line, because his forty acres meet all his needs. Yet if all our predecessors had felt that way, the farmer would instead be a cave dweller, chasing down his dinner with a stick and a rock. During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore—in part because it's fun to do. But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their “low contracted prejudices.” And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment—until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective" ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Even though I am a lay person as far as science is concerned, I have always been interested in astronomy and space, and followed the first space endeavours from around 1957 with Sputnik, and the many successes and failures which followed, up to the present day...... My Interests in associated sciences including SR and GR was spiked by the Cosmos series in the early seventies and Carl Sagan, who I see as probably the greatest educator of our time. I still periodically to this day listen to his "Pale Blue Dot" narrative. So, is Astronomy truly the "the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful"of the sciences. What do you think?

Hmmm, this looks like another "Not fit for mainstream or anywhere else" candidate.

Rubbish..... The expansion of the universe/spacetime, applies to our observable universe that evolved from the BB. Actually evidence so far points to you not knowing what you mean or what others are trying to tell you, along with completely ignoring the evidence supporting the incumbent model, in favour of your own unsupported speculative imagination. Being a newbie, I was trying to be kind...actually due to the nonsensical nature of much of what you are saying, I'm actually reading very little of it. But yeah, as I said before, forums such as this are open to all and any rubbish and agenda they wish to push. It makes no difference to the real scientists and what they have and will achieve. That's just more codswallop. When I was a young bloke and the space age had just begun, there were three competitive theories as to how the universe came to be...[1] Steady State of Hoyle fame....[2[ Oscillating theory, [3] and the BB. After the COBE discovery and other observations, the BB gained ascendancy and the others became "also rans" because the BB simply matched the observational data better then the other two...... You do not have an argument...you have speculative thoughts that you like discussing for self grandeur purposes, that have no evidence supporting them at all, and to be truthful, ranging from simply unsupported to down right poppycock. Science/astronomy did not have much say in those days.....What you or I thought was controlled by the church and its hierarchy. The Earth stood as the center of the solar system for obvious reasons that had nothing to do with science. If I'm not mistaken, this has also been explained to you..... In actual fact because the early universe/spacetime was just a seething plasma, [atoms had not as yet formed and electrons roamed free] photons could not traverse spacetime as they do today...The early universe was opaque, until temperatures had fallen to around 5000K...from then electrons were able to couple with atomic nuclei, forming the first atoms of H2 and some He. That occurred at around 380,000 years post BB and we do see that light from that period at a temperature of 2.73K and we call it the CMBR. Yes, that is common knowledge.

Rubbish and gobbldydook I'm afraid...plus of course the Koran and/or the bible are not scientific books, but rather beliefs and mythical legend, written by obscure men in an obscure age....nothing more, nothing less

The most convincing evidence of the protoplanetary/collapsing disk of gas hypothesis, is tha we have observed the same mechanism, in various stages of formation, in action in other distant systems. If any genuine real uncertainty existed in the current model of solar system formation, imo it is the formation of the Moon. see the following...... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant-impact_hypothesis extract: "The giant-impact hypothesis is currently the favoured scientific hypothesis for the formation of the Moon.[4] Supporting evidence includes: Earth's spin and the Moon's orbit have similar orientations.[5] Moon samples indicate that the Moon's surface was once molten. The Moon has a relatively small iron core. The Moon has a lower density than Earth. Evidence exists of similar collisions in other star systems (that result in debris disks). Giant collisions are consistent with the leading theories of the formation of the Solar System. The stable-isotope ratios of lunar and terrestrial rock are identical, implying a common origin.[6] There remain several questions concerning the best current models of the giant-impact hypothesis, however.[7] The energy of such a giant impact is predicted to have heated Earth to produce a global "ocean" of magma, and evidence of the resultant planetary differentiation of the heavier material sinking into Earth's mantle has been documented.[8]However, as of 2015 there is no self-consistent model that starts with the giant-impact event and follows the evolution of the debris into a single moon. Other remaining questions include when the Moon lost its share of volatile elements and why Venus—which experienced giant impacts during its formation—does not host a similar moon".