Timeline for Would it be possible to ride a gravitational wave?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Jun 16, 2020 at 11:03 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Apr 6, 2017 at 16:49 | comment | added | aphenine | Also, my understanding is that, in places with very strong GW emitters (e.g. inspiralling black holes), where you'd actually feel the waves, you'd experience fluctuations in gravity. You might not want this as a drive system, but Alastair Reynolds uses this a weapon in one of his books. I think that's totally legit from what I remember of my LIGO days. | |
| Apr 6, 2017 at 16:37 | comment | added | aphenine | Gravitational waves cause two polarizations, plus and cross. Both are in the plane of the wave (i.e. they have no effect in the direction of travel). In each, one direction is squished and the other expanded. This is why all gravitational wave detectors use right-angled detectors to find the difference between these two directions for each polarization. | |
| Oct 31, 2016 at 12:58 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 25, 2016 at 23:49 | comment | added | HDE 226868♦ | @senderle I wasn't clear there; it was an unimportant point. | |
| Apr 25, 2016 at 23:49 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 24, 2016 at 14:58 | comment | added | senderle | Could you say more about why you can't ride a plane wave? I always thought that when objects are pushed outward by the shock wave of an explosion, they are effectively riding the wave. | |
| Feb 18, 2016 at 15:58 | comment | added | HDE 226868♦ | @ckersch I don't think so, because the spacecraft wouldn't be nudged in any specific direction, AFAIK. | |
| Feb 18, 2016 at 15:26 | comment | added | ckersch | If there exist 'peaks' where the distance between points are stretched apart, wouldn't it be possible to travel in the peaks to move faster than light speed in undisturbed space? | |
| Feb 17, 2016 at 21:17 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 17, 2016 at 16:05 | comment | added | HDE 226868♦ | @ckersch It alternates between stretching them together and stretching them apart. | |
| Feb 17, 2016 at 14:51 | comment | added | ckersch | How does the presence of a gravity well affect the effective distance between two points, relative to the distance between two points in a vacuum? Will it always be greater than the effective vacuum distance between two points, given gravity waves created by a positive mass? | |
| Feb 17, 2016 at 1:51 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | I always love it when scientists are willing to say "We don't know why ____ has never been observed in a lab, or any evidence found in nature, so we typically do {insert simplification here}." Its nice when they admit they're a little bothered why something is so convenient. | |
| Feb 17, 2016 at 0:30 | history | answered | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |