Hacker News Reader

Comment by ashvardanian | Hacker News Reader

Can’t wait to see what Astrophysics and Cosmology will look like in 20 years. Just a decade ago we were bound to the radio spectrum and had 0 experience with gravitational waves…

View on HN

Bound to the radio spectrum?! Most astronomers work with more energetic photons than the puny things you get get from radio sources. Talking about being bound to the entire electromagnetic waveband is more correct, but we've not been bound to any narrow subset of it since like the 1930's.

Also, arguably the first non photon astronomical detection was the detection of neutrinos from SN1987A by Kamiokande, Baksan and IMB. There's also cosmic rays that we've been detecting for ages, but they don't really point back toward anything so it's really hard to argue you're doing astronomy with them.

I'm pretty sure they meant electromagnetic spectrum. Gravitational waves moves us beyond that.

As does the neutrino astronomy SiempreViernes mentioned.

Yes, I didn't mean otherwise, I was only interpreting the GP.

Sure, electromagnetic waveband is exactly what I meant, just phrased it in more accessible terms. AP is my academical background. I didn't think I could contribute much there, so I quit even before LIGO was constructed. Now it looks interesting again :)

Indeed. Another aspect that could cause quite a disruption is cheaper access to space. With Starship coming to life, launching heavy and large stuff for very little money should enable previously "impossible" space telescopes (be they electromagnetic, neutrino or gravitational wave based).

Yes very exciting, sounds like this method has achieved a snr ~ 1 revealing the the frequency distribution of the underlying signal. Like you I cant wait to see what happens in the coming decades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com