The Very Large Array, Einstein, and Gravitational Waves
By Brian Nixon, Special to ASSIST News Service
SOCCORO, NEW MEXICO (ANS – Feb. 15, 2016)
-- 50 miles outside of Socorro, New Mexico there stands one of the
marvels of the modern scientific world: The Very Large Array (VLA). For
those not familiar with the telescopes (or haven’t seen them in the
multitude of movies they’ve been featured), here’s how the Very Large
Array website describes them:
“The
Very Large Array, one of the world's premier astronomical radio
observatories, consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration
on the Plains of San Agustin fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico.
Each antenna is 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. The data from the
antennas is combined electronically to give the resolution of an antenna
36km (22 miles) across, with the sensitivity of a dish 130 meters (422
feet) in diameter” [1].
This
short description doesn’t give much in the way of the function of the
telescopes. The motto, however, is very telling: “revealing the hidden
universe.” The Very Large Array has been at the forefront of
investigation into the inner workings of the mysterious cosmos: black
holes, quasars, supernova, and gamma ray bursts. And in 1995, The Very
Large Array was used in conjunction with the national SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program. All of this makes The Very Large
Array a fascinating and somewhat enigmatic confluence of science,
culture, and creative energy.
And
this convergence of fields is the reason my family wanted to take a
tour of the telescopes on the heels of the recent gravitational waves
discovery, which, incidentally, gave more data supporting Einstein’s
Theory of Relativity. True, we wanted to see where movies such as Terminator, Interstellar, and Contact
were filmed, but more importantly, we wanted to take in the science
that occurs all around us in New Mexico, giving us a glimpse of
humanities quest to understand the universe in which we live.
As
we watched the movie at the visitors center, toured the base of one the
telescopes, and read the literature provided by the VLA, I couldn’t
help but marvel at the grandeur of it all; it’s mind- boggling, an
intellectual and informational tour-de-force of man’s mission to
comprehend and apprehend our place in this small point in the universe,
the Milky Way. I felt like travel writer and photo-explorer, J.D
Andrews, when he said, “It’s a big world out there. It would be a shame
not to experience it.” But the world I’m reading about at the VLA isn’t
just planet Earth—it’s the cosmos! And I’m experiencing it through a
conjoining of radio waves and satellite telescopes.
Amazing.
Though
I loved my time at the VLA, my mind kept wandering back to the
gravitational wave discovery. I was mussing to myself while meandering
through the VLA museum: what does the discovery mean? How will the
discovery of gravitational waves help shape our understanding of the
cosmos? How are we learning more about the mind of God (as scientist,
Dr. Paul Davies, suggests through the study of science)? It may be too
early to tell what the significance of the gravitation wave discovery
will mean, but that’s not stopping some from speculating. Here’s what a
few scientist have suggested will come from this discovery.
According
to theoretical physicist, Dr. Cliff Burgess, “It’s a whole new way of
seeing the sky. If you look with visible light as far as we can look in
the universe, the universe is no longer transparent, it becomes opaque.
There’s nothing you can do about that.
“If
you could see [gravitational waves], you can see back past where you
can’t see with physical light. That would be cool. We’d have direct
access to something that’s farther away than we can hope to see
otherwise.” [2].
Another
scientist, Dr. Gabreila Gonzalez, likens the discovery to listening.
She states, “We can now hear the universe” [3]. The consequence of
hearing the universe provides scientists with a deeper understanding of
the expansion of the universe, an area of research connected to
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and verified by Edwin Hubble in 1929
[4].
Astrophysicist,
Dr. Hugh Ross, suggests something more profound: the discovery supports
a Biblical view of creation. In a Christian Post interview, Ross
states, "The Bible was the first to predict big bang cosmology" [5]. Put
another way, the Bible inherently teaches that the universe is
expanding by an act of God; the consequence of the act (The Big Bang) is
an expanding universe. For Ross, discoveries like this show us God’s
fingerprints upon His creation.
Fascinating.
Teachers
and scientists will continue to tease us with the truth of the
discovery, telling us more about the universe and the possibilities
tethered to the truth. It’s all tantalizing.
But for now, the details of the discovery play out like a Shakespearean play.
As told by Adrian Cho for Science
Magazine, he writes, “On 14 September 2015, at 9:50:45 universal
time—4:50 a.m. in Louisiana and 2:50 a.m. in Washington—LIGO’s automated
systems detected just such a signal. The oscillation emerged at a
frequency of 35 cycles per second, or Hertz, and sped up to 250 Hz
before disappearing 0.25 seconds later. The increasing frequency, or
chirp, jibes with two massive bodies spiraling into each other. The
0.007-second delay between the signals in Louisiana and Washington is
the right timing for a light-speed wave zipping across both detectors.”
Lots
of science-speak! In short, the LIGO team watched the convergence of
two black holes, anticipating a collision so great the effects could be
measured.
Cho
continues, “The collision produced an astounding, invisible explosion.
Modeling shows that the final black hole totals 62 solar masses—3 solar
masses less than the sum of the initial black holes. The missing mass
vanished in gravitational radiation—a conversion of mass to energy that
makes an atomic bomb look like a spark” [6]
I
don’t know about you, but discoveries like this light my fire; they
provide a sense of enchantment and delight with the universe, an awe
that ignites my imagination. Whether you believe in God or not, it’s
discoveries such as this that causes one to pause—and depending on your
worldview, you can praise the One who put the magisterial universe in
place, or you can simply ponder the meaning of it. Either-or, it’s a
reason to celebrate. All people can laud truth. For the theist,
truth—wherever it is found—is from God. And more specifically, God has
manifested His truth in both the Word and world, as Author, Architect,
and, in this case, Divine Astronomer. And when we are privileged to see
the spectacle of His truth made visible—such as the gravitational wave
discovery does, we can only sit back as witnesses, watching the wonder unfold before our eyes.
Photo captions: 1) Albert Einstein. 2) Gravity is Talking. 3) VLA at Sunrise. 4) Brian Nixon.
About
the writer: Brian Nixon is a writer, musician, and minister. He’s a
graduate of California State University, Stanislaus (BA) and is a Fellow
at Oxford Graduate School (D.Phil.). To learn more, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Nixon or https://twitter.com/BnixNews.
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