All Questions
Tagged with cosmology gravitational-waves
82
questions
81
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6
answers
7k
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What was the major discovery on gravitational waves made March 17th, 2014, in the BICEP2 experiment?
The Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics held a press conference today to announce a major discovery relating to gravitational waves. What was their announcement, and what are the implications?
...
- 5,569
15
votes
2
answers
841
views
Is there a Cosmic Gravitational Background Radiation (CGBR)?
The recent discovery by the LIGO made me wonder about this.
We know that there exists a CMBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, a blanket of electromagnetic energy covering the universe, made by ...
- 562
13
votes
2
answers
557
views
Are there black body-like thermal emissions of gravitational waves?
According to the answer to this previous question:
Yes, all of the fields in quantum electrodynamics are excited in blackbody radiation, not just the electromagnetic field.
But, (as I understand) ...
- 1,424
11
votes
3
answers
2k
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What would the wavelength of the Cosmic Background Gravitational Wave radiation be?
Considering electromagnetic CMB can only see light as old as 380,000 years after the Big Bang, whilst theoretically those being gravitational should be formed from the beginning, what would their ...
- 441
10
votes
2
answers
973
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Do photons and cosmic rays radiate energy through gravitational waves? If not, why not?
Due to the mass-energy equivalence, both matter and EM radiation bend spacetime, and both are capable of forming singularities (black hole, white hole/kugelblitz). In light of this, why do photons ...
user40753
10
votes
1
answer
178
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What LIGO should detect that it has not yet?
What would the lack of detection of such phenomena tell us about the Universe?
What should be the most frequent signals detected, theoretically speaking? I'm a lay person in the area, so you might ...
- 407
9
votes
1
answer
1k
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What do the line segments on the BICEP2 B-mode polarization map mean?
The first image of BICEP2 visuals shows the "BICEP2 B-mode Signal", described as follows:
Gravitational waves from inflation generate a faint but distinctive
twisting pattern in the polarization ...
- 505
9
votes
1
answer
124
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Cosmological consequences of the mass-energy content of gravitational waves
This paper published in 1969 indicates that a majority of the mass-energy of the universe may be contained in gravitational waves:
"Turning next to phenomena on a galactic scale, we find it ...
- 24.8k
9
votes
2
answers
158
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CMB curly B-modes and dark matter
I raised a question a while ago regarding weak gravitational lensing of galaxies and the CMB. With all the fuzz with the BICEP2 data, I think it is time to raise even more questions about this amazing ...
- 14.5k
8
votes
1
answer
253
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How many galaxies could be the source of the recent LIGO detection?
The recent LIGO detection is pretty exciting, and a lot of people are asking whether there is a chance of optical detection of the black hole pair that created the signal. From a cursory reading of ...
- 134k
8
votes
1
answer
307
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The BICEP2 data are evidence of gravitational waves and of inflation. Are they also the first observation that requires quantum gravity?
It strikes me that the recent announcement of data from BICEP2 contains two really Big Deals:
the first evidence of gravitational waves
the first evidence of inflation.
Is there also a third?
the ...
- 22.4k
8
votes
1
answer
350
views
In the B mode power spectrum, what is the relationship between the multipole number and the wavelength of the seed gravitational waves?
One of the key datasets of the recent BICEP2 results is the B mode power spectrum shown below. The existence of these B modes implies the existence of gravitational waves prior to inflation.
My ...
- 7,063
8
votes
0
answers
135
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How do inflationary models predict the generation of gravitational waves during the inflationary period?
Recent results from the BICEP2 experiment have produced a lot of talk about the primordial gravitational waves produced during the inflationary period.
I would like to have some explanation about how ...
- 383
7
votes
1
answer
826
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Damhsa Theory: Can gravitational waves really affect the long term climatic evolution of Earth?
As a glaciologist I'm often involved in topics related to the long-term climatic evolution of Earth, and to the factors that can trigger or end ice ages.
Recently, I came across the paper "Applying ...
- 228
6
votes
1
answer
209
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If we could only see gravitational waves, how "bright" would the sky be?
I feel like we actually are not sure about the answer (as there have not been many detections so far, so our knowledge about gravitational waves is probably not very deep), so this might be too ...
- 407