It announced publicly these days the news to highlight the existence of gravitational waves. Predicted by general theory of relativity, Einstein, a hundred years ago, they remained "invisible" long since interact very weakly with matter, they are very difficult to identify. In fact, until 1957 it was not clear that the "where" have a physical reality and that are capable of transferring energy. Irony is that theoretical physicist who demonstrated the reality of gravitational waves, Felix Pirani, died on the last day of last year ...
WIKIPEDIA
An electromagnetic wave moves electric charges, thus giving rise to an electric current that can be easily revealed; Gravitational waves are born following an amendment of spatio-temporal structures, as, throwing a heavy object in a lake, producing a wave. A structure space-time is changed every time huge masses moving into an area of space, astronomical observations made in the 70s of last century revealed the strange behavior of some "pulsars" neutron star very massive, which emit radio frequency extremely regular intervals. Yet such a pulsar - as found Russell Hulse, PhD student at the time, and Joseph Taylor, his teacher (both received the Nobel Prize in 1993 for this discovery) - may, under certain conditions, erratic behavior : frequency waves emitted changes over time: a time increases, then decreases: apparently, a Doppler effect. Such a phenomenon can be explained by the pulsar's interaction concerned with another body, found in its vicinity. Here, then, a case where two huge masses move in a relatively small area at the astronomical scale; Indeed, in this case, there were two masses at a distance somewhere between one and five solar diameters and circling around each other at an interval of about eight hours. Hulse and Taylor's remarks indicated a transfer of energy thus created an extremely strong gravitational interaction. They represented a clear allusion, but not a direct measurement of gravitational waves.
In the more than 40 years that followed these comments, astrophysicists around the world gathered around several large projects to achieve this mission, which seemed impossible (I will not insist, the Internet is full of information on the subject; in English, see physics.aps.org, but I found a few sites in Romanian, discussing clear and to the event and that sometimes presents illustrative videos, for example Agerpres press release of 11 February). Impossible, because the effect is, as I said, infinitesimal: the observation spoken everywhere today, the interaction between two black holes (black holes) each having between 25 to 30 solar masses produce an effect sizes comparable to those of an atomic nucleus! Yet they could, and this is a fact no less significant than the thing itself: not only that things "small", small can be observed, detected, measured - their importance can be very significant in context. Little things have their life and their importance even if not always realize we can not or do not want to admit this fact.
Changing the reference, as physicists say, I think the open letter addressed two weeks ago, the Minister of Culture by Ms Carmen Musat, deplored the plight of the few cultural magazines who remained in Romania. In the "spacetime" of the Romanian economy, full of seemingly insurmountable problems, perhaps the phenomenon is hardly visible, and the shock wave it produces very poor. The parable of gravitational waves remain valid: what reaches us is a barely perceptible signal, but that does not mean that the problem that triggered it can not prove, finally, of enormous proportions.
Before concluding, once again about a possible link between tiny and significant: sometimes a minor glitch can cause a great injustice. With great delay, it received the first issue of this year's Cultural Centre, which contains excellent summaries of cultural events of 2015. I read with great interest. In the article Mr. Paul Cernat, "Vitality intellectual nonficţiunii", he did me the honor undeserved me assign the care of two volumes of writings Zebedee Barbu, metaphysics and humanism, published in 2015 Publishing Tracus Arts. This enormous labor was done by Marin Diaconu; I was, and I somehow involved, but one who has to thank for the emergence volumes is Professor Diaconu. Only this "example" does not seem to have much to do with the "parable of gravitational waves," I said before putting the final point. Trying to escape the trap that I prepared it myself, changing the title of "Intersections", "parable" with "metaphor". I have done it?
