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Short Description of the Use Case
Gravitational waves are 'ripples' in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. Einstein's mathematics showed that massive accelerating objects (such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other) would disrupt space-time in such a way that 'waves' of undulating space-time would propagate in all directions away from the source. These cosmic ripples would travel at the speed of light, carrying with them information about their origins, as well as clues to the nature of gravity itself.
While the processes that generate gravitational waves can be extremely violent and destructive, by the time the waves reach Earth they are thousands of billions of times smaller! In fact the amount of space-time wobbling they generated is of the magnitude of a 1000 times smaller than the nucleus of an atom!
A sensitive class of detector uses a laser Michelson interferometer to measure gravitational-wave induced motion between separated 'free' masses.
Interferometers are investigative tools used in many fields of science and engineering. They are called interferometers because they work by merging two or more sources of light to create an interference pattern, which can be measured and analyzed; hence 'Interfere-o-meter', or interferometer. The interference patterns generated by interferometers contain information about the object or phenomenon being studied. They are often used to make very small measurements that are not achievable any other way. This is why they are so powerful for detecting gravitational waves--LIGO's interferometers are designed to measure a distance 1/10,000th the width of a proton.
The basic configuration of a Michelson laser interferometer is shown at right. It consists of a laser, a beam splitter, a series of mirrors, and a photodetector (the black dot) that records the interference pattern.
simple example on how use an autoenconder to efficient data codings and foldings
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