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<blockquote data-quote="freyar" data-source="post: 6823258" data-attributes="member: 40227">Yes, what made Einstein famous was the fact that measurements of the deflection of starlight during an eclipse matched his prediction on the nose (there's a bit of a story behind that, but that's really another post).&nbsp; That's what we call weak lensing, since it's just a slight deflection.&nbsp; Larger objects, like clusters of galaxies, can actually lens light strongly enough to create multiple images.&nbsp; I don't know if LIGO has considered what a strongly lensed signal would sound like, but that's probably easier to work out than the actual black hole merger calculations.This is a pretty good explanation of why the LIGO detectors can observe the wavelengths they can --- due to the size they are (and also how far apart they are).&nbsp; We can make a similar analogy to explain what can affect the wave itself.&nbsp; If you are in a boat and have a kilometer-wavelength wave come at you, your boat will not do much to the wave.&nbsp; However, short wavelength waves, like 1 meter, bounce off the boat in all different directions.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="freyar, post: 6823258, member: 40227"] Yes, what made Einstein famous was the fact that measurements of the deflection of starlight during an eclipse matched his prediction on the nose (there's a bit of a story behind that, but that's really another post). That's what we call weak lensing, since it's just a slight deflection. Larger objects, like clusters of galaxies, can actually lens light strongly enough to create multiple images. I don't know if LIGO has considered what a strongly lensed signal would sound like, but that's probably easier to work out than the actual black hole merger calculations. This is a pretty good explanation of why the LIGO detectors can observe the wavelengths they can --- due to the size they are (and also how far apart they are). We can make a similar analogy to explain what can affect the wave itself. If you are in a boat and have a kilometer-wavelength wave come at you, your boat will not do much to the wave. However, short wavelength waves, like 1 meter, bounce off the boat in all different directions. [/QUOTE]

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