Wave Propagation Quotes

I thought that there must be an easier way to explain how a gravitational wave interacts with matter: If one just looked at the most primitive thing of all, 3D floating masses out in space, and look at how the space between them changed because of the gravitational wave coming between them.

Notwithstanding these major arguments the wave theory initially did not meet with complete acceptance.

The wave is not the water. The water merely told us about the wave moving by.

If the wave is getting bigger, it causes the time to grow a little bit. If the wave is trying to contract, it reduces it a little bit. So, you can see this oscillation in time on the clock.

A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with as many other waves as there are uneven places in the object where the said wave is produced.

The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea.

I was very eager to produce an oscillator for short waves. I was doing science with microwaves, and I would get down to a few millimetres in wavelength, but I wanted to get shorter wavelengths; I wanted to get into the infra-red because I saw there was a lot more to be done there.

The waves travel with the velocity of light and slightly squeeze and stretch space transverse to the direction of their motion. The first waves we measured came from the collision of two black holes each about 30 times the mass of our sun.

People think of waves as going in an orderly crash - whoosh - crash - whoosh, but in fact there are lots of different crashes and whooshes, all at different stages, and all going off at the same time.

A gravitational wave is a very slight stretching in one dimension. If there's a gravitational wave traveling towards you, you get a stretch in the dimension that's perpendicular to the direction it's moving. And then perpendicular to that first stretch, you have a compression along the other dimension.

The technical challenges were technical challenges that were not unbeatable; it was just that we had to learn how to do things and how to build a sensitive enough device. That took us 20 years after we built the first version of the LIGO detector.

A radiometer is a device for measuring the intensity of radiation. A microwave radiometer consists of a filter to select a desired band of frequencies followed by a detector which produces an output voltage proportional to its input power.

You throw a rock in the water, and ripples spread out slowly. But they do go far.

If you throw a stone in a pond... the waves which strike against the shores are thrown back towards the spot where the stone struck; and on meeting other waves they never intercept each other's course... In a small pond one and the same stroke gives birth to many motions of advance and recoil.

Physics has found no straight lines. Instead, the physical universe consists of only waves undulating back and forth allowing for corrections and balance.

Every time you accelerate - say by jumping up and down - you're generating gravitational waves.

I said, suppose you take a light - I was thinking of just light bulbs because, in those days, lasers were not yet really there - and sent a light pulse between two masses. Then you do the same when there's a gravitational wave. Lo and behold, you see that the time it takes light to go from one mass to the other changes because of the wave.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?

The waves from all the different parts of a sphere would cancel each other out. You need motion that's nonspherical.

All motion in this universe is in the form of waves, successively rising and falling.

When gravitational waves reach the earth, the waves stretch and squeeze space. This is a tiny stretch and squeeze. Far too small to detect with ordinary human senses.

This result is due to a phenomenon of interference which occurs within the sensitive layer.

Gravitational waves, because they are so imperturbable - they go through everything - they will tell you the most information you can get about the earliest instants that go on in the universe.

The sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach

Waves from moving sources: Adagio. Andante. Allegro moderato.