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Complex Numbers #1052370 added July 9, 2023 at 8:25am
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Revisited: "The Big Not So Empty"
I'm used to reaching back in time for these retrospective entries, but this one also reaches out into space: "The Big Not So Empty" 
The link to the original article is broken, but by poking around on the Nautilus site, I found it with a different URL.
This is good, because it's an exceptionally long articles, with fun and helpful cartoon illustrations, all focused on the goal of explaining to non-technical audiences what "space" is.
I have no need to rehash what I wrote back then, but one of the reasons I revisit these older entries is to see if anything's changed. And in this case, it has, sort of.
Near the end of the article, we have this:
And the exciting thing is that we are closer than ever to being able to probe these extreme deformations of space. Whereas before we were deaf to the ripples of gravitational waves moving through the universe, we now have the ability to listen in to the cosmic events that are shaking and disturbing the goo of space. Perhaps in the near future we will understand more about the exact nature of space and get at these deep questions that are literally all around us.
I remembered seeing something new about gravitational waves recently, so I went and looked for it, and, by cosmic coincidence, this was published just last week.
Now, I'm not going to do my usual commentary on that. I'm not averse to spouting off on shit I know little about, as you know, but in this case, this stuff is so far above my pay grade that I don't even know how to respond. I'm told that physicists are deliriously happy about these findings, though, and that link I just posted seems to do a pretty good job of explaining the significance. In brief, as I understand it, they found a way to detect incredibly tiny space-bending gravitational ripples from events in the early universe. Which is cool, and I think it's a nice complement to how the JWST is giving us better (photonic) images of stuff from the early universe.
I've even heard that they recently confirmed that time moved at a different rate back then, which... well, let's just say I need to make a run to the liquor store later to deal with all of this.
Just one last thing to note, which is more about the ambiguity of the English language: "space" in this context refers to, well, everything we know about, including, say, the space between things here on Earth, while "space" can also mean "the stuff outside the Earth's atmosphere." Outer space. Similarly, though more obscurely, you can sometimes see the term "gravity waves" in relation to weather phenomena , but that has nothing to do with the gravitational waves these science articles speak of. |
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