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American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Some Cosmic Perspective

Some Cosmic Perspective

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This New York Times article and accompanying film does a smashing job of explaining the gravitational wave discovery, complete with trippy music. Also, be sure to check out the 10 sec recording of the historical “chirp” that revealed all.

What the physicists managed to achieve is simply magnificent. Yeah we can argue all day and night about Bernie vs. Hillary, or the nutjobs in Malheur–and the stuff of our daily lives is important–but things like this really do put things in perspective. The universe is damned magnificent and we’re lucky to be part of the dance.

The Guardian also has a film and a good explanation, with lots of crazy Einstein hair.

 

Reader Interactions

129Comments

  4. 4.

    Brachiator

    When Trump becomes president, we won’t have these tiny, barely detectable gravitational waves. The waves will be huge. And American. We will have the best waves ever. America will be wavy again.

  6. 6.

    Cacti

    I saw that John Lewis said he was unimpressed with Bernie’s bona fides as an alleged civil rights hero.

    I figured HR was going to give us something like “Establishment black man refuses to Feel the Bern”.

    Up to you, Cole.

  8. 8.

    Technocrat

    What’s funny is that LIGO was completed five years ago, and presumably it’s been silent until now. Imagine going to work for five years with nothing to show for it, and then BAM you’re world famous.

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Brachiator:

    America will be wavy again.

    America will be so wavy that you’ll get sick and tired of all the waviness. SICK AND TIRED, that I will tell you.

  15. 15.

    Big R

    @Technocrat: In fact, the signal was detected four days before the overhauled LIGO became officially operational, and then the five months since then have been the “Bullshit, we didn’t find that!” phase.

    But, you know, presumably they had other things they were working on, since the author list was four pages long. But I agree that the mental image of Stanley, the Lonely LIGO Lackey, is a funny one.

    Heh. “Dear Penthouse: It was just another Tuesday, when suddenly the LIGO thrummed under me.”

  16. 16.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Cacti: the PUMA bullshit, much of it no doubt led by Republican ratfuckers, has already started to spread across social media as the youts discover that super delegates and other nonwhite Democrats exist. It’s word for word the same bullshit that I tore into alleged Ckinton supporters for back in 2008. And probably the same Republican funded talking points.

  21. 21.

    Cacti

    @jl:

    I read that Sanders’ Secret Service code name is ‘Intrepid’.

    What now, buddy? Huh?

    It’s quite something to see the Bernie youth take the Twitters and the comment section to call John Lewis “sellout” and “establishment”…

    Considering the man’s done more to advance the human condition in this country than the entire millennial cohort combined.

  23. 23.

    Technocrat

    @Big R:

    But, you know, presumably they had other things they were working on, since the author list was four pages long

    You know, I wondered about that. If the detector was only supposed to detect gravity waves, then one would imagine that it was completely silent the whole time before detection. How many times can you write “An Examination Of The Cosmological Implications Of Not Detecting Anything Yet”? ;-)

  25. 25.

    jl

    @redshirt: What is your explanation for not being baffled by this place all the time? Are you not aware of any BJ blog internet traditions?

    The post had links previous one did not and WGAS about another post or not anyway?

  31. 31.

    Karen

    I don’t get the gravitational at all. Is it a precursor to time travel? The article mentioned “space-time.” I feel stupid as anything but science was never my strong suit. I believe it exists but it’s above my pay grade.

  32. 32.

    redshirt

    Hey, the Supreme Court blocked Obama’s climate change initiatives, which pretty much negates any chance the world had of warding off global climate change, ensuring massive death and destruction, but…

    repost.

  34. 34.

    Marc

    @Technocrat: They’ve been writing “we’ve seen nothing” papers for literally decades. It’s been a running joke in the field. What’s remarkable is that they kept persisting, tightening the proverbial screws, and once they got down to a critical sensitivity level they starting to see something. And the fact that they have multiple other events in the hopper is hugely encouraging.

    (Actually, it wasn’t silent at all – the trigger level is so low that it’s rattling around all of the time. The trick is to filter a ton of noise.)

  35. 35.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    @redshirt: Who is this “Tom” you speak of? Also, what is a “post”? Also, I came here for juice, but I can’t seem to find any…

  38. 38.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    What the physicists managed to achieve is simply magnificent. Yeah we can argue all day and night about Bernie vs. Hillary, or the nutjobs in Malheur–and the stuff of our daily lives is important–but things like this really do put things in perspective. The universe is damned magnificent and we’re lucky to be part of the dance.

    I’ll still be seething that you are supporting a different candidate than me.

  41. 41.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Cacti:

    It’s quite something to see the Bernie youth take the Twitters and the comment section to call John Lewis “sellout” and “establishment”…

    Wow, can you believe commenters?

  42. 42.

    WarMunchkin

    @redshirt: Saw it, we’re fucked. But besides that, I think it just underscores that there’s no way out other than winning Congress anymore. Executive power will not work for immigration or climate change (and maybe it shouldn’t, who knows, power is politics). We have to decisively and overwhelmingly win Congress, either by convincing people to abandon their white nationalist identities on the Republican side or hope Sanders’s revolution is actually some sort of thing.

  44. 44.

    Tom Levenson

    @Hillary Rettig: no worries on my end. It’s great to have more room to talk about, and to have the links to the kind of material that gives context to what is an extraordinary discovery and display of experimental skill.

  45. 45.

    Calouste

    @dp: In these kind of cases the Nobel Prize tend to go to the people who laid the theoretical groundwork. When the Higgs boson was discovered the Prize went to Higgs and Englert, who did the theoretical work in the 60s. Einstein is dead though, and the Nobel Prize can’t be awarded posthumously, so it might go to someone else. Or they could decide to not award it, as a tribute to Einstein. It will all be next year though, this year’s submission deadline has already passed.

  48. 48.

    redshirt

    @WarMunchkin: Sadly it’s probably already too late, but by 2020 or 2024 it will definitely be too late.

    I get that there are vested interests against combating climate change – coal and oil primarily, I assume. But there’s so much money to be made in the technologies that would replace carbon intensive energy sources. ExxonMobil can still make billions!

    But nope, that’s not enough.

    I’d also point out how disturbing it is that the Supreme Court is actively involved in partisan politics now.

  50. 50.

    Technocrat

    @Marc:

    What’s remarkable is that they kept persisting

    That is remarkable. A testament to someone’s perseverance (and probably their fundraising ability).

    The trick is to filter a ton of noise

    You have to wonder what year the “blast snoop dogg through subwoofers” prank got old.

  51. 51.

    sparrow

    @Just Some Fuckhead: I know, it’s like they’re totally representative of what everyone thinks! For instance, by reading comments on Baltimore Sun articles, I know that every last citizen of Baltimore is white and racist as hell.

  52. 52.

    Anoniminous

    @redshirt:

    Have I entered some quantum state of no-being?

    First we need to know:

    1. Are you a cat?

    2. If the answer is “yes,” are you in a box?

  60. 60.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Gin & Tonic: I had some professors from MIT as an undergrad, they were all quite good(actually some of the best teachers I had as an undergrad).

  61. 61.

    Roger Moore

    @Technocrat:

    If the detector was only supposed to detect gravity waves, then one would imagine that it was completely silent the whole time before detection.

    It almost certainly wasn’t. It’s only supposed to detect gravitational waves, but in practice it will accidentally detect all kinds of other stuff. Part of the reason they have two detectors a couple of thousand miles apart is so they can rule out events that are detected by only one of the two as noise. The reason it took them months between when they detected the signal and when they announced it is because they were going over their data seven ways from Sunday to make sure they had actually detected a gravity wave rather than something else.

  62. 62.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Marc: yeah, you can belittle his comment and see how far that gets you. The point is that Sanders hasn’t been building and nurturing relationships the way Clinton has. We are what we do, not what is “in our hearts.” So, cynical or not, she’s been there, and more recently than 30 or 50 years ago. (Shit, Holy Joe was a Freedom Rider and he’s hardly someone I’d look to as being good for black issues.). When Sanders steals Clinton’s lines for some belated outreach, people notice. When he plays the more-progressive-than-you-because-I-never-compromise game, the president (who has been on the receiving end of it) notices.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @Karen:

    I don’t get the gravitational at all. Is it a precursor to time travel?

    No, it isn’t. One of the implications of relativity is that time is another dimension like the three spatial dimensions we’re all familiar with, and that gravity warps the fabric of spacetime. But that doesn’t mean anything about time travel.

  64. 64.

    dedc79

    @Cacti:

    It’s quite something to see the Bernie youth take the Twitters and the comment section to call John Lewis “sellout” and “establishment”…

    This is lame and lazy even for you.

  66. 66.

    Anoniminous

    @redshirt:

    This is good. Since the third question would have been, “in your box is there a flask of poison and a radioactive source?”

  67. 67.

    Fair Economist

    The thought of two black holes many times the mass of the sun orbiting each other dozens of times per second is really frightening.

  68. 68.

    Technocrat

    @Roger Moore:

    That’s fascinating. So, despite my original snark, they may indeed have had some interesting things to say about noise filtering – even pre-detection.

  69. 69.

    scav

    @redshirt: Is your house a box or notz? To unlox we need some docs. Red lines, blue lines, lines on docs, find them quick! and then we’ll talks.

  71. 71.

    redshirt

    @Roger Moore: I recall a great way to imagine time as the 4th dimension of space.

    Say I tell you we’ll have a meeting at 10AM at 81 Lexington St, 34th floor, NYC.

    The usual 3 dimensions define the place and the height, but time, the 4th dimension, is obviously critical here too. The 10AM reference is a spatial co-ordinate in an expanding space time geometry.

  73. 73.

    different-church-lady

    @dedc79: No, Cacti is right: it is quite something to see.

    I wouldn’t bother commenting on it, except this is the third time I’ve seen something like it happen. Just not nearly as prominently as this time.

  75. 75.

    different-church-lady

    @redshirt: Yeah, still doesn’t work for me, since 3D stuff doesn’t mentally exist without the 1D and 2D components, but time can easily be mentally compartmentalized away from the first three Ds.

  76. 76.

    Marc

    @Bobby Thomson: I’m belittling the fact that there is a really extraordinary development in physics, the subject of this thread, and a stack of bitter posters attack the person who posted it because she supports a different candidate than they do, followed by dragging political bullshit into a nonpolitical thread.

  78. 78.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Marc: She could have left politics out of it. This was what HR posted:

    Yeah we can argue all day and night about Bernie vs. Hillary, or the nutjobs in Malheur–and the stuff of our daily lives is important–but things like this really do put things in perspective. The universe is damned magnificent and we’re lucky to be part of the dance

  79. 79.

    redshirt

    @different-church-lady: Well, you can imagine going to an office on the 34th floor at 81 Lexington St, right? To get there, you’d be navigating the traditional 3 dimensions; to get there at a specific time is the 4th. Otherwise, you’d be early or late.

  81. 81.

    different-church-lady

    @redshirt: Yes. But I can conceive of 10 am independently of 81 Lexington.

    I have a much more difficult time conceiving of the height of 81 Lexington as being something different from the width of 81 Lexington. All three Ds of physical space seem like they’re of a piece: they can be seen and they can be touched and the simply strike our minds as different aspects of a single element.

    Time, on the other hand, seems to exist independently of what laypeople would consider the “physical world”. Indeed, to a layperson, time can seem to be an utterly abstract concept — something far more conceptual than real.

  82. 82.

    dedc79

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yes, she was inviting everyone to put the political disagreements aside for the moment and consider this other big news . . . And a bunch of people declined the invitation (e.g. to point out the critical fact that in comments somewhere else on the internet, someone said something unfair about John Lewis) for some still unexplained reason.

  86. 86.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    @redshirt: Part of the challenge is that we are freely mobile in the 3rd dimension (imagine driving around town), but our movement through time is constrained to a single direction and speed (like riding a slow-moving train). Due credit to Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorian zoo from Slaughterhouse Five for the train analogy…

  88. 88.

    redshirt

    @Technocrat: You’re moving through the dimension of time right now! In fact, if you stand still, it’s the only dimension you’re still moving in, due to the fact that everything that exists is moving too.

  92. 92.

    les

    A post on the mechanics of LIGO, implications and misc. stuff from a theoretical physicist type who can write well for lay types. Pretty f’n amazing accomplishment.

  94. 94.

    Technocrat

    @redshirt:

    Yeah, I think “agency” is the right word to describe the discrepancy. I am moving in time, but I can’t alter it. I can alter my movement in the other 3D’s (imprisonment and post-Thanksgiving torpor notwithstanding).

  95. 95.

    Brachiator

    @Technocrat:

    TBH, the space-time equivalence has always baffled me too. We can move in both directions through each dimension of space, but time not so much.

    Of course, there is the famous limerick:

    There was a young lady named Bright
    Whose speed was far faster than light;
    She set out one day
    In a relative way
    And returned on the previous night.

  96. 96.

    Baud

    @Technocrat:

    TBH, the space-time equivalence has always baffled me too. We can move in both directions through each dimension of space, but time not so much.

    To my knowledge, they are not “equivalent.” Space and time are simply interconnected.

  101. 101.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    @redshirt: Yes, agency is a good way of thinking about it. But even when we’re not doing it through our own agency, we are always moving in 3D. We might not be aware of the 3D movement, because it is happening at very small and very large scales relative to our perception and our local gravity sources.

  103. 103.

    Marc

    @Bobby Thomson: Fair enough; I didn’t intend to be aggressive, and I’m sorry about that.

    Truthfully, I don’t think that we’re gaining anything in this forum by circling around the same old arguments. We’ll learn something new in the primaries from Nevada and South Carolina, and I’m content to see what that is.

    (Also, I’m just allergic to the demand that I condemn unspecified things that anonymous people said somewhere else, and the implication that this discredits whatever cause they claim to support. This was so miserable in the run-up to the Iraq war, and I had hoped that we’d left it behind. It seems to have reappeared in this primary fight, and it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Can’t help it!)

  104. 104.

    redshirt

    @Disgruntled former Baud supporter: Indeed. Consider that we are little specks stuck on a big spinning rock that is orbiting a star that is orbiting a black hole at the center of our galaxy, which is orbiting a collection of other galaxies, which in turn are orbiting an even larger collection of galaxies, and so on.

    How fast do you think we’re actually moving, given all those orbits?

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    @Technocrat:

    they may indeed have had some interesting things to say about noise filtering – even pre-detection.

    Especially pre-detection. Gravity waves are almost impossibly tiny, so even the most trivial things can mask them. The systems have to be ridiculously well isolated from the rest of the world to keep the noise level low enough that they have a prayer of finding anything in the recorded signal.

  106. 106.

    Technocrat

    @Baud:

    I’m no physicist, but I’ve always understood The SpaceTime Continuum to be 4-dimensional. Can you have a geometry where the dimensions are different things?

    I feel like the answer would be headache-inducing, regardless.

  108. 108.

    Marc

    @Baud: Time is another dimension, but it doesn’t follow the same rules that space does. It has one direction, for example. The reason why it’s called spacetime is that the two are linked through relativity. At low velocities they behave as if they are almost completely distinct; the rules of special relativity link them at high velocities (so that I would notice differences in the speed of a clock depending on my reference frame). At high accelerations the rules of general relativity change things, and space no longer acts as if it is flat.

  110. 110.

    Roger Moore

    @different-church-lady:

    Time, on the other hand, seems to exist independently of what laypeople would consider the “physical world”.

    Which is exactly why it was such a great intellectual achievement for Einstein to figure out how to treat it as part of the same continuum as the three spatial dimensions.

  111. 111.

    Baud

    @Technocrat: I believe so. When they say space-time is four dimensional, I believe what that means is that you need four coordinates to plot it accurately on a graph. Not that all four dimensions are made up of the same “stuff.”

  114. 114.

    redshirt

    So our lives are actually the merging of so many, many, many individual light cones that it must be one giant vortex of stuff. A humongous toilet, perhaps.

  116. 116.

    redshirt

    @Technocrat: Thanks. I think science has revealed a reality of infinite beauty. It should be and hopefully will be our new religion, but we’ve got to get rid of the old ones first. And they’re fighting.

  119. 119.

    Cermet

    @Baud: Correct; time is not a spacial dimension. In general relativity and special it has a “equivalent unit of “space”” but that is imaginary (uses i; that is, square-root of negative one with the spacial unit so it has no reality in the real universe) as I recall. Time is a strange beast in physics and not easily incorporated in theory. Entropy often is used to help define the direction of time.

  121. 121.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    @Baud: It would probably take some sort of attention-grabbing stunt. Have you considered temporarily suspending your campaign, and then dramatically “un-suspending” it? Or you could come out in favor of a significant increase in funding for burrito R&D… But I’m pretty disgruntled, so I still might not come crawling back ;0

  123. 123.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    @redshirt: And we’re made up of really tiny particles that are also moving very fast through relatively vast empty space (relative to their scale at least). Reality is truly jaw-dropping, beautiful, haunting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

    Well, there might be one or two things I would change…

  125. 125.

    Sad_Dem

    burrito R&D

    Eat enough of them and you produce your own gravity waves? We’ll have to perform a test to confirm.

  129. 129.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Also, the space and time dimensions intermix with each other to some degree depending on your state of motion. For two observers going at different velocities, what they identify as the pure space and the pure time dimension aren’t the same; one observer’s time will have a bit of some spatial direction mixed in, from the other’s perspective.

    It’s a little like the way your “left-right” and “front-back” will not be the same as somebody else’s if you’re facing in different directions.

    Only the relevant transformation in the space-time case isn’t a rotation; it’s a different thing called a Lorentz boost, under which the speed of light is invariant. And because of the speed-of-light limit, time never entirely gets transformed into space or vice versa; at most they intermix 50-50.

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