Gravity Waves

Gravity waves can be produced when mass undergoes acceleration.

A natural mechanism for gravity wave production is the merger of two compact objects. Such a situation is a natural because the compact objects have deep gravitational potential wells and binary systems composed of merging compact objects have very short orbital periods at the time of merger (and hence exhibit very rapid variability at merger).

How will we detect these disturbances?

The distortion in the space-time structure interacts with material in a different way than does electromagnetic radiation. EM waves move objects around. Gravity waves distort the shape of the object.

Gravity waves differ from electromagnetic radiation in terms of their Polarization. The polarization for an electromagnetic wave is the direction in the electric field points: Electromagnetic Waves: Polarization.

The polarization of a gravitational wave is different-- Gravity Waves: Polarization-- there is alternate stretching and squeezing along two axes oriented at an angle of 90^o.

The result of these differences is given here.