Talk:Gravitational wave

Don't remove information about sources of results

Recently the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves announced the successful culmination of 50 years of development of the idea of detecting gravitational waves by pulsar observations. Someone removed the reference to the research consortium and replaced it with the non-specific passive tense "was claimed to be detected", despite the consortium being clearly identified in the reference. This is not good Wikipedia practice! Wikilinking the consortium would have been, so I have done so in a new edit. Elroch (talk) 19:57, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

The text about this appeared like a press release promoting North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves. Since this was a joint project it is WP:UNDUE to just mention one part of the collaboration. The focus of the article should be on the findings not the organisation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:12, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

It is of course entirely normal practice to credit the scientist, research group, project, organisation or collaboration that achieved and published an advance in knowledge. I am sure you will agree that the solution was to credit others contributing to the same advance, as User:Hfst has commendably done. Elroch (talk) 12:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Acceleration vs motion

There's a bit of confusion in the lede, resulting in a back and forth with an anon IP. What matters is a change in energy tensor, not "acceleration" per se. In fact, Einstein and Rosen discuss gravitational waves arising from masses in "relative motion" with respect to each other, but do not mention "acceleration". Tito Omburo (talk) 14:32, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

And an additional problem is that motion spherically symmetric around a distant point (eg black hole formation) does not radiate. IMO this does not need to be in the first sentence but should be in clear in the article and maybe the intro. (I have a bunch of refs I add when I am near them in a week or so). Johnjbarton (talk) 15:19, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, a system of masses that probably most readers would agree is "accelerating"! Tito Omburo (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for noting my confusion and providing the correction. My faulty understanding had been that it was acceleration that primarily figured for generating GW (versus not), and it was therefore some angular aspect of the quadripole moment making an equivalence with acceleration that managed to do so as well. 24.19.113.134 (talk) 00:27, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Misleading Wording in "Sources"

This part of "Sources"

   In general terms, gravitational waves are radiated by objects whose motion involves acceleration and its change,      provided that the motion is not perfectly spherically symmetric (like an expanding or contracting sphere) or      rotationally symmetric (like a spinning disk or sphere).

Should say "circularly symmetric" or "continuously symmetric". A square is rotationally symmetric.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotational_symmetry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_symmetry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_symmetry

John G Hasler (talk) 22:51, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Aren't the words "moving at a constant velocity" redundant?

I'm referring to the statement: "An isolated non-spinning solid object moving at a constant velocity will not radiate".. HOTmag (talk) 18:03, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I think that is the least of the issues with that section. Without sources there is no way to verify the claims. I'm inclined to delete the section. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:16, 31 October 2024 (UTC)