The Absurdity of Detecting Gravitational Waves

A head-vaporizing laser with a perfect wavelength detecting sub-proton space-time ripples. Huge thanks to Prof Rana Adhikari and LIGO: http://ligo.org Here s how he felt when he learned about the first ever detection: https://youtu.be/ViMnGgn87dg Thanks to Patreon supporters: Nathan Hansen, Donal Botkin, Tony Fadell, Saeed Alghamdi, Zach Mueller, Ron Neal Support Veritasium on Patreon: http://bit.ly/VePatreon A lot of videos have covered the general overview of the discovery of gravitational waves, what they are, the history of the search, when they were found but I wanted to delve into the absurd science that made the detection possible. When scientists want one megawatt of laser power, it s not just for fun (though I m sure it s that too), it s because the fluctuations in the number of photons is proportional to their square root, making more powerful beams less noisy (as a fraction of their total). The smoothest mirrors were created not for aesthetic joy but because when you re trying to measure wiggles that are a fraction the width of a proton, a rough mirror surface simply won t do. Filmed by Daniel Joseph Files Music by Kevin MacLeod, http://www.incompetech.com "Black Vortex" (appropriately named) Music licensed from Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com "Observations 2" (also appropriately named)