Adhikari: LIGO has not seen another signal matching its first detection
Rana Adhikari · The Technical Challenges of Measuring Gravitational Waves - Rana Adhikari of LIGO · Y Combinator · Sep 15, 2017 · at 11:13
Caltech physicist Rana Adhikari discusses the physical magnitude of gravitational waves with host Craig Cannon.
0:00 / 0:03exact quote · 3.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We've not seen anything of that size since then, since that first one.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Rana Adhikari
Adhikari: LIGO could probably double its detected signals from existing data
“I think in our data there must be, probably we could double the number of signals we have right now if we were to, I mean, that's my guess. It could be much more.”
Adhikari: 40-kilometer interferometers could detect collapsing first stars
“We would be able to find signals from Basically, the, all the way back. I mean, it would have. We would find the first stars in the universe, and they were collapsing, if they exist, which I think they do.”
Adhikari: Decades of required effort would have deterred early gravitational wave researchers
“If they, I think if they had known how tough it would be, or that it was going to take fifties, five years to have success, probably no one would have started.”
Adhikari: LIGO stabilizes lasers ten million times beyond commercial models
“So we take the best laser in the world that we can find, and then we stabilize it and make it about ten million times more stable than what you can buy, and then it's kind of just barely good enough, and we're gonna have to do better if we want to do better.”
Adhikari: Laser radiation pressure physically moves LIGO's 40-kilogram mirrors
“There's so much laser power that when you, it's weird to think about, but there's so much laser power when we hit the mirror, it moves the mirror. And the mirror, if you, to imagine it, is about this big. And it is 40 kilograms”