Measuring Gravitational Waves w/ Elevator Accelerometer

[roineust]

An elevator in outer space where there is negligible gravity, accelerates at the most precise constant acceleration that current technology enables.

Inside that elevator, resides an accelerometer that is the most precise accelerometer that current technology enables, but not more precise than what the elevator acceleration technology enables.

Will the accelerometer inside the elevator, show any change of measurments of constant acceleration, if a gravitational wave of any given magnitude and angle passes through the elevator?

If the accelometer will be able to detect that gravitational wave, will an iterpetation that says that LIGO and similar detectors are actually the most sensitive accelometers that exist, be a correct interpetation?

 

[PeterDonis]

Will the accelerometer inside the elevator, show any change of measurments of constant acceleration, if a gravitational wave of any given magnitude and angle passes through the elevator?

No, because the acceleration measured by the accelerometer is due to the rocket engine, not the geometry of spacetime, and the gravitational wave only affects the geometry of spacetime.

 

[PeterDonis]

will an iterpetation that says that LIGO and similar detectors are actually the most sensitive accelometers that exist, be a correct interpetation?

No. LIGO is not an accelerometer. It is a changing tidal gravity detector. Gravitational waves are waves of changing tidal gravity--or changing spacetime geometry, which is the same thing. The mirrors at the end of the arms in LIGO undergo zero proper acceleration; any relative motion can only be due to changing spacetime geometry.

(More precisely, the LIGO mirrors have zero proper acceleration in the plane of the arms--obviously since LIGO is on Earth everything in it has a constant proper acceleration due to being pushed upward by the ground, but that is all perpendicular to the plane of the arms and so can be ignored when analyzing LIGO's operation. But for the best possible gravitational wave detector, you would want it free-floating in deep space, with the whole thing moving inertially, with zero proper acceleration in any direction whatever.)

 

[PeterDonis]

Since the OP question is based on a misconception, which has now been corrected, this thread is closed.