dr-becky 8 months ago
astrophysicist #Space and Time

Can Gravitational Waves Interfere With Each Other?

Either with constructive or deconstructive interference, just like water waves, sound waves, or light waves?

They're waves yes, but they're not mechanical waves or electromagnetic waves like sound or light, so do they still behave like a wave?


Thanks to the detections made by LIGO and VIRGO gravitational wave detectors of neutron star mergers we now have some idea, but can we observe this in the future in black hole mergers?


And what does this mean for a theory of quantum gravity and the force carrier the graviton?


00:00 - Introduction

02:51 - What are gravitational waves?

04:31 - What do we mean by "interference" for waves?

06:56 - How do we know that gravitational waves should interfere with each other (in theory)?

09:06 - What does this mean for a theory of quantum gravity?

11:00 - How can we test this with observations?

13:58 - Bloopers

Dr Becky Smethurst
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