<story><title>European plan for gigantic new gravitational wave detector passes milestone</title><url>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/european-plan-gigantic-new-gravitational-wave-detector-passes-milestone</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Hnrobert42</author><text>What are the practical applications of gravitational wave research? Or is it purely basic science for now?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;What are the practical applications of gravitational wave research?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Currently, not much. We’re Galileo grinding lenses at home.&lt;p&gt;Theoretically? Everything from a whole new mode of active sensing, &lt;i&gt;e.g.&lt;/i&gt; deep into the Earth and&amp;#x2F;or Sun, all the way to communications. Being able to directly measure gravity also lets us do new classes of experiments (not yet, but if we can measure more sensitively). We don’t know what we don’t know when it comes to gravity, so that’s another pot of potential.&lt;p&gt;Less fantastically, these are immensely precise instruments. The manufacturing methods and know how will almost certainly translate to other domains.</text></comment>
<story><title>European plan for gigantic new gravitational wave detector passes milestone</title><url>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/european-plan-gigantic-new-gravitational-wave-detector-passes-milestone</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Hnrobert42</author><text>What are the practical applications of gravitational wave research? Or is it purely basic science for now?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonh</author><text>The several already existing gravitational wave detectors have already detected signals believed to come from black hole-black hole, black hole-neutron star and neutron star-neutron star mergers.&lt;p&gt;Using the time delta between detecting the same events at different detectors around the globe, we have inferred the directions the signals are coming from.&lt;p&gt;The intensity curves of the events tell us details about the masses and other characteristics of the colliding object. Also over time the distribution of their masses and other characteristics will give us information about the populations and distribution of these objects, which can help validate our theories of star, neutron star, black hole and galaxy formation.</text></comment>