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Random pic 8 November 2021

The European Gravitational Observatory, near Pisa; one of the laser tubes.      https://flic.kr/p/NeNPdg

Michael Ixer ● 1828d3 Comments

Wow!!!  Those tubes are incredibly long!I had to look up the European Gravitational Observatory as I had not heard about it.  Most of the information that comes up on Google relates to LIGO in NW USA an another in the SE of USA. That was perhaps because I copy-pasted your introduction....  I admit that space is not a subject I know much about!What do gravitational waves do and do they affect, or have an effect on, Earth?Apologies for being so ill-informed on these matters!

Ivonne Holliday ● 1828d

Ivonne. Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein in his general theory of relativity back in 1915. I suppose they do affect us in that we're all subject to gravity, but in the same way that light waves are also part of our every day living (but obvious with different effects). The EGO (Virgo) in Italy and the two LIGO sites in the US are observatories doing astronomical work looking for events in deep space (for example, colliding black holes). Now there are the three sites these events can be triangulated and the direction in space identified which means they can be correlated with other emissions such as light or gamma rays from the same event.The Wikipedia article of gravitational waves is quite good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativityThis is the EGO website: https://www.ego-gw.it/And this is the complete photoset of my visit to the EGO: https://www.flickr.com/gp/m-j-i/nya2C0

Michael Ixer ● 1828d

A million thanks for this.  I will sit later on this afternoon and study the information.

Ivonne Holliday ● 1828d