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0 pointsfsloth10y ago0 comments

Any vibration is just a signal. We don't actually have a direct experience with a sound, hearing is our brains interpreting the nerve signals generated by tiny organelles jiggling in our ears. What is concrete then, is only the shape of the signal, but not the medium through which it propagates.

This device just acts like a gigantic hearing device. Except it's not pressure waves, but the fabric of the universe which reverbates.

Note that the frequency of the signal is indeed in the audible range.

Anyway, I was a bit irritated of this same phrase, but because I tought radio astronomers had been listening to skies for quite some time now.

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wuliwong10y ago

I think it bothers me because it is focusing on the sound that some small piece of this operation creates when the amazing thing is to be able to measure gravitational waves. Who cares if you hook the output of some piece of LIGO up to a speaker or not and make a noise? Unplug that speaker and these results are just as amazing.

delecti10y ago

> Anyway, I was a bit irritated of this same phrase, but because I tought radio astronomers had been listening to skies for quite some time now.

Radio waves are light too though. Or at least they're photons.

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