Justin Hunt said:
I was imagining the wave fronts being planes and it being a longitudinal wave. After reviewing the article and researching I see that gravitational waves are transverse with a transverse tensor rather than vectors and have two polarizations.
Yes.
Justin Hunt said:
I can’t admit to fully understanding what that means.
"Transverse" just means that any "action" of the wave is orthogonal to the direction of propagation.
"Two polarizations" means, heuristically, that there are two "modes" in which the wave can act. The images in the Wikipedia article show the two modes. (There is a lot more math lurking beneath this, to justify why those two images are indeed the two "modes", why they are independent of each other, etc., but that is a quick heuristic description.)
Justin Hunt said:
you indicated the orientation of the dector will effect the “shape” of the gravity wave that it sees.
Yes, because it will affect the relative amplitude of the two polarizations as seen by the detector. In the simplest case, where the detector is oriented directly along one of the polarizations, it will see only that one, and not the other one. More generally, any single detector can only detect part of the total action of the wave; you need multiple detectors to fully detect the wave's action.
Justin Hunt said:
Does this cause an issue with multiple detectors confirming a result?
No; we have multiple detectors pointing in different directions precisely
because one detector can only detect part of the total action of the wave.
Justin Hunt said:
If their orientations are different due to their location, wouldn’t the waves look different and make it difficult to pick out in the background noise?
A particular wave can be more difficult to detect in some directions as compared with others. For example, if a particular wave is entirely made of one of the two polarizations, then a detector oriented in the wrong direction for that polarization will detect nothing at all. However, if you have multiple detectors and take care to vary their orientations appropriately, at least one of them will detect any wave that is detectable at all above background noise.
Justin Hunt said:
Couldn’t a certain orientation cause both arms to be effected equally so that nothing is detected?
No. A certain orientation for a wave of only one polarization (the "wrong" one for that polarization) will cause both arms to not be affected at all. But if the wave affects the arms at all, it will not affect them equally. Remember that the arms, by design, are at a 90 degree angle, and look at how the images in the Wikipedia article stretch and squeeze.