Strain of gravitational wave

[Alexander21]

Hello science forum!

I've been active in other science forums, but this is my first post in scienceforums.net and my question has to do with gravitational waves.

The strain of a gravitational wave is at the order of magnitude of 10^-21 meters as shown in the diagram from wikipedia.

I'm wondering how is this posible, when the smallest existing particle is at the order of magnitude of 10^16 (quarks)?

Is it posible to detect such a small strain?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO#/media/File:LIGO_detector_sensitivity_curve.png

[Mordred]

It is this miniscule strain that requires the sheer length of the detector arms in order to detect a GW wave of this syrain amplitude. It is theotetically possible with much longer arms to detect smaller strains however this becomes highly problematic with noises sich as vibration from other sources.

 The one advantage is that GW waves have a quadrupole waveform while other noise sources are typically dipolar such as mechanical vibration.

[beecee]

18 minutes ago, Mordred said:

It is this miniscule strain that requires the sheer length of the detector arms in order to detect a GW wave of this syrain amplitude. It is theotetically possible with much longer arms to detect smaller strains however this becomes highly problematic with noises sich as vibration from other sources.

 The one advantage is that GW waves have a quadrupole waveform while other noise sources are typically dipolar such as mechanical vibration.

Hiya Mordred....I hope this question is appropriate to this thread, as it just came to mind. On another forum I was once participating on, certain anti relativist who  often expressed his anti GR stance, often expressed his support for a bloke named Carver Mead and a version of GW's labelled G4V. Can you comment on this?  

[Strange]

6 minutes ago, beecee said:

support for a bloke named Carver Mead

Oh no! What is it about engineers and their need to try and tackle physics problems that are over their head!?

But he is an absolute legend in VLSI design.

[beecee]

7 minutes ago, Strange said:

Oh no! What is it about engineers and their need to try and tackle physics problems that are over their head!?

But he is an absolute legend in VLSI design.

  Bingo! and also the bloke pushing these anti GR propaganda on this other forum was also an IDer, [thereby hangs a tale]  albeit closeted during most of his interactions. From what little I have read on this Mead, and this G4V style of GW, that the detectors at Hanford and Livingston were simply not constructed to "verfiy" or otherwise this G4V concept...something to do with parallel arms?

I'm just wondering since VIRGO and the GW170608 detection, if any new info had surfaced?

[studiot]

11 hours ago, Alexander21 said:

The strain of a gravitational wave is at the order of magnitude of 10^-21 meters as shown in the diagram from wikipedia.

Hello and welcome to St.

 

Please explain what you mean by the above statement.

 

Strain is a dimensionless quantity, not measured in metres.

[Alexander21]

49 minutes ago, studiot said:

Hello and welcome to St.

 

Please explain what you mean by the above statement.

 

Strain is a dimensionless quantity, not measured in metres.

Thanks for your answer, which helped me a lot. When posting my question I had in my mind a wrong understanding about strain. I found out that strain is given by the formula (l-L)/L where l is the final length and L is the original. So if the original length is huge, we can measure extreamly small strain. And it is wrong to compare the strain with a physical length, like the dimension of a quark.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Alexander21

[Strange]

Also, the technique of interferometry allows differences of less than the wavelength of light to be measured. 

And by searching for patterns using correlation we can find signals that are below the noise level. 

11 hours ago, beecee said:

I'm just wondering since VIRGO and the GW170608 detection, if any new info had surfaced?

Haven’t heard anything specific but I think I saw a comment that there are lots of candidates that are being checked. 

[studiot]

55 minutes ago, Alexander21 said:

Thanks for your answer, which helped me a lot. When posting my question I had in my mind a wrong understanding about strain. I found out that strain is given by the formula (l-L)/L where l is the final length and L is the original. So if the original length is huge, we can measure extreamly small strain. And it is wrong to compare the strain with a physical length, like the dimension of a quark.

Good stuff.

You can write powers directly using superscript on this forum.

Having superscript and subscript is a great boon.

Look for the X² and X₂ symbols on the toolbar at the top of the text entry editor.

[beecee]

15 hours ago, Strange said:

Haven’t heard anything specific but I think I saw a comment that there are lots of candidates that are being checked. 

Yep, thanks for that Strange.