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Permalink Reply by Jessica Berman on April 3, 2012 at 9:16pm

I know a much better test to try and find the gravity waves with a group of satellites was planned but NASA pulled out of a joint project with the ESA due to budget cuts. ESA is planning to go ahead with a more limited version of the testing. Hopefully results will happen even with the limitation but we'll be left wondering what more could have been learned? If found they would be a way to study general relativity more plus allow astronomers to study the very early universe.

Permalink Reply by Nontheist Central on April 5, 2012 at 8:47am

I didn't know this project was going on.  It sounds really cool!  Gravity waves are the ripples in the fabric of space/time cause by an object interacting with it, for example, a planet floating near.  Sounds like they're trying to detect the ripples left from the Big Bang, which would be incredibly weak by now, I suspect.  We can still detect radiation from the Big Bang, so it stands to reason that they'd be looking for "gravity waves".  The problem with detecting them is that there is so much interference with all the matter we see, as well as the far greater amount of matter we don't see (the fact that we don't know what dark matter is yet really complicates things, I think), makes it difficult to be sure that the waves they're observing actually came from the Big Bang.  If they aren't detected, I personally think that it may be because we're not smart enough to figure it out yet.  It seems to be an incredibly complex process.  I'm looking into this more because I think it's fascinating!  Thanks for sharing!  I'll come post again if I find anything interesting to add.