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I read that gravitational waves are so tiny that we need extremely precise equipment to detect them. I am no physicist, but GR really intrigues me and I was wondering about two things:

  • How powerful would a gravitational wave have to be for an average human to notice its effects, and what would those effects look like? How would these effects change as a function of the energy of the wave?
  • What kind of cosmic event (e.g. black hole on black hole collision) could cause these gravitational waves?
knzhou
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GuPe
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2 Answers2

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The gravitational waves observed recently came from the most powerful sources of such waves currently available for observations - collisions of black holes. They still were detectable with great difficulty and aid of powerful, precise equipment. Conclusion is as follows: Apparently there currently exist no gravitational waves so powerful that they could be noticable by a human. One could speculate that much stronger effects of gravity take place in interior a of black holes or very far in the past, when the universe was very hot and dense. But it doesn't seem likely that we will ever be able to observe these thing with our eyes.

Blazej
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Well it depends upon size of the event, and its distance from earth. If the same event that LIGO captured, had taken place a couple of light years from earth, it would have been observed much easily, may be by human beings without any instrument. But that could have also caused other hazardous effects which is not the point here. So, it is energy, and distance to origin both are important.

kpv
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