Gravity-wave detector - Radio Electronics April 1986

[floobydust]

Anyone remember this Radio Electronics April (1986) Fool's circuit?
I was a total sucker and breadboarded it to find out for myself

It has a really weird oscillating (ringing) output that seems to be the op-amp's noise low-pass filtered... but also with "amplitude-modulated astrophysical events"! Who can resist listening to that?
It's great for investigating microphonic capacitors. I put the output into an audio amp and surprised to lightly tap capacitors and hear it loudly, along with the gravity waves 

[T3sl4co1l]

As it turns out, all those proposals (and weekend projects) that popped up over the years, were about 10^9 times too insensitive to actually see cool stuff out there.  But we've solved that, finally.

Tim

[Richard Crowley]

I have a friend who works at LIGO Hanford.  I am hoping she can arrange a tour sometime.

[T3sl4co1l]

I would love to see the stabilization systems documented!

Tim

[Seekonk]

I remember the Black Noise Generator, A loop of wire on a BNC mounted in a black bean soup can.

[Twoflower]

I would love to see the stabilization systems documented!

Tim

Bad luck: the Omega Tau Podcast has half of the issues done in English. But this one is German. So if you understand German this is a very good Podcast covering the Small German Detector GEO600: Relativität und Gravitationswellen. Which does a lot of research which later will deployed to the other systems.

The suspension systems for Ligo and GEO600 are described here:
http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/igr/index.php?L1=research&L2=suspensions

Additionally the mirrors are adjusted using magnetic and electrostatic fields. The latter is in development and currently only used in the GEO600. If my memory serves me right.