Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatorium
 

There are two of these stations operating in the U.S, and five operating around the world. Each is made to operate a mechanism intended to help prove the existance of Gravitational Waves, something theorized by Albert Einstein.

Gravitational Waves are believed to be a form of energy-ish thing given off by anything that has mass and is moving. I really am not qualified to talk too much about this since I don't fully understand it myself. More information from people who seem to know what they'r talking about is availible at the official LIGO website.

You really should click the link. Its important.

So the subject of this thread is this: Is LIGO a good use of America's money? The reason LIGO was built is to find evidence of the existance of something that would help discover much more about the universe and what makes it tick. On the other hand, we aren't sure that these gravitational waves even really exist. Its very possible that there are no such thing, Einstein was wrong about this one thing, and we are spending billions of dollars on an 'if'. Furthermore, there is the problem that even if Gravitational Waves do exist, how do we know that we are searching for them the correct way? What if they do exist and this machine simply isn't enough to find them? Does this possibility justify the building of even bigger, more expensive machines to continue searching this possibility?

So, either gravitational waves are real and this machine will discover them, and then help revolutionize the way we look at the universe and everything in it....

Or its billions of dollars wasted on chasing the dreams of a man that has been dead for a hundred years.

What do you guys think?

'Wasted' is a loaded term.

You have to understand that, even if the observatorium fails to find these gravitational waves, that itself will be a discovery.

It means part or all of the theory about them is wrong and needs to be either adjusted or maybe replaced entirely.

Science is based on an empirical method - you theorise something and then you do something to test your hypothesis. It's like asking "Is it right to spend money researching things?"

Yeah, what Arhra said; if people don't search for these things, if research isn't carried out, if theories aren't tested and found to be either true or not true, then we'll never know the answers and scientific advance halts. We pretty much have people researching everything at this point, in every concievable field of research, because we want answers to everything so we can advance as a species; are we to stop all of these other fields from conducting research as well, purely on the basis that "it might not be worth the time/money/effort", at least not yet.

Just because somethings more costly doesn't mean we should stop doing it. Imagine if we thought like that on everything we've ever put money/time/resources/energy into developing over the course of history, we'd probably still be living in the dark ages.

So no, it's not a waste of money. In fact I'd say we need to throw more money at things, so we can find the answers faster.

I think initiatives like this don't need government backing because they have no social repercussions, and that government money could be better spent on social issues to provide a better environment to live in. That's not to say this is a bad thing to research, but since the gains from such knowledge are limited in application, I think it's better to leave it as a private expenditure. One could say it increases our education, but there's more direct ways to do that.

It's still an interesting theory to test, and Ahrha's point is very valid. The lack of evidence will contribute to quite a bit of scientific understanding.

I have to disagree with about half of that. Or maybe all of it.

The discovery of gravitational waves, limited in scope? Proving their existence would be a huge confirmation in theoretical physics. Theoretical physics leads to applied physics. Applied physics leads to engineering. Engineering leads to applications that you would probably see as "less limited."

Yes, we're not going to be able to do anything with this right away, but this is the R of R&D; research must precede development, or what the hell are you going to develop?

If you want to spend more money on the direct education of your populace, I would first suggest you make a few changes to the culture of education in the United States, and the efficacy of current spending; throwing money at the problem isn't going to make it go away.

Or you could make peace instead of war, and save a few billion there instead. Why is it always science that gets cut, instead of war?

Also: @Megaman: "billions of dollars wasted on chasing the dreams of a man that has been dead for a hundred years". Um. no.

First off, dreams? Fat chance. Einstein made well-unified and verifiable postulates that make much of modern life possible. Satellites? Relativity. GPS? Relativity. Two big-name, obvious examples that have a huge impact on modern life. Special Relativity and General Relativity are scientific theories. It's a pretty significant meaning.

This ain't no dream, it's a hypothesis that has already been indirectly shown to exist. All we need to do now is directly show it to exist and we're golden.

First we prove it exists; then we see what we can do with it; then we actually do something with it. Patience. We can't go directly to step 3 without some investment.

Its simple mass makes the fabric of reality bend. We call it gravity. Gravity waves are just moving ripples or bends in the fabric of space time. They are almost exactly analogous to ripples on a pond except for that whole 2D vs 4D thing. Oh and the whole thing were bending the fabric of spacetime causes slight alterations in length and such. Nothing major. :shifty:

I wonder how one predicts the potential out comes of any scientific advance before it happens. I mean the exploration of radiation lead to all sorts of medical applications. Exploration of Quantum mechanics lead to MRIs, most of our current computer technology, and heading for things like 80% efficient solar and thermal cells not to mention LED displays that act like paper and possibly to computers that make you current super computers look like they came from the 1960s. Not so much so for the radiation but the exploration of Quantum Mechanics has to have eaten at least a billion dollars of research so far most of which was completely esoteric and had no practical application.

Examples can be found in every branch of science and even mathematics. Knowing this who can we trust to have the foresight to predict the unpredictable and determine what research deserves funding. Private companies certainly are not going to fund research for the sake of research because most of it doesn't actually pay off. They step in at the point where someone has demonstrated a possible avenue of profit. Rarely if ever do you see a private company financing something like Dark Matter research on the off chance it'll pay off. (Ok maybe as a charity thing and a tax right off but that isn't going to replace government funding.)

Of course above and beyond that there is the intrinsic value in knowing something. This is much like the intrinsic value of a human life. Its hard to quantify but its there and it large. Like I said before you never know where knowledge will take you much like you can't predict who will be the next Mozart, Picasso, D'Vinci, etc. Knowledge for knowledge sake is at least as important as social programs. In fact knowledge for knowledge sake can be a social program as it builds pride in one's country. That and their are much better places to cut spending.

Just wait till LISA comes online. We'll get some good stuff then.

Would that be a ripple in reverse?

Also, Zilla, where would the funding for this sort of thing come from? It's billions and billions of dollars. That leaves government pretty much the source of funds to do scientific research. Now, perhaps you meant that social needs like universal access to food, health care, and shelter but we already have the means to get those, we simply don't wish to allot them.

Without social backing for scientific research, pretty much the entire field will be owned and controlled by big business, as no one else will be able to afford it. The issue of only things that are seen as profitable (not necessarily useful to anyone) being researched is already a pretty major one, and I'm all for not making it worse.

Just a small addition. Many of you are saying something along the lines of "If the facility doesn't find them, then at least it can prove they don't exist and then we've learned soemthing." Please correct me if I've misinterpereted your posts, but this seems to be what is being said.

The problem with this is that LIGO is going to be run indefinitely, and no matter how long it is run it can never truly prove that gravitational waves don't exist. Therefore the facility is built under the assumption that they do exist, and while many of you will likely argue that this is not the case, the scientists running the facility make it fairly evident to those who take the tours that they are very confident they exist despite the lack of scientific data supporting it. The scientists are so confident in this that plans have been made to build a much larger facility than LIGO that will be operated in space. Many at LIGO believe these plans will be carried out regardless of whether LIGO ever finds anything.

These are some factors that also need to be considered.

1. Even if gravitational waves do exist, little will be gained from finding them. Human beings, even with machines, have a hard time interacting with anything that functions like gravitational waves.

2. It is a possibility that Gravitational Waves do not exist, and this facility will never work towards proving that they don't exist, only at the possibility that they do. Because of this, larger, more expensive facilities will be built if these fail, regardless of whether or not any evidence of their existance is found.

3. Even if gravitational waves do exist, if they effect light the same way that they effect matter, then they will be undetectable by the devices being used at LIGO.

4. Even in the best case scenario, LIGO finds gravitational waves, the gain will be very small except for maybe a "Yay for Einstein moment". On the other hand, if the same amount of funding was put instead into another field of scientific research, the gains would be much greater.

So I guess what I am trying to get at isn't "Is LIGO a good thing" or "Is LIGO a good thing to spend 5 billion dollars on", but "Is LIGO a worthwhile use of government funding when we are in a state of economic disaster and the same amount of money could debatably be much better spent restoring balance to the economy or instead spending on studying a more profitable field of science."

Yes, scientific advance is important but at the same time we must be practical. Even assuming there are Gravitational Waves, we don't know that LIGO will find them, and this makes LIGO a very controversial build. If we can't stop scientific study in a field because it seems like there would be little to no gain for it after billions of dollars spent, where do we draw the line?

QFT. Now's not the time to verify an ethereal concept with no concrete immediate application, especially when we're already operating on the notion that it's true and it's working out fine for us regardless. All we're doing is trying to verify a theory, not develop any new information. We may get new information as a result of these experiments, which is really the only incentive behind the project.

One thing,

That's nationalism, not socialism. Nationalism doesn't raise standards of living.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, practical research like researching aerodynamic plane models that reduce fuel consumption or organic research for fertilizer or psychological research to design more effective therapies or pharmaceutical research to develop better medical care is definitely awesome, it's applied science, it has tangible benefit. Theoretical physics, on the other hand, is only really going to help things like space programs and the military, and it's going to take a lot of time and resources before it spills over into medical procedures.