this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
40 points (100.0% liked)
Physics
1332 readers
16 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well, space isn't a perfect vacuum, is it? It's pretty damn close, but you'll still encounter the occasional hydrogen molecule.
I mean, were talking about 1.7 seconds delay over a distance of 130 million lightyears! That's virtually nothing.
In fact, this might be a good way to measure the average density of loose matter in the universe.
Was thinking about that, too.
And if we had enough ligos throughout the solar system, maybe we could even image dark matter distributions.
It also depends on the starting point. If both the gravity wave and the light start in the middle of a star or even just inside a shell of an exploding star, or, in case of black holes, inside a cloud of matter that surrounds the hole waiting to be sucked in, there is more than enough matter to delay the light.