On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 05:35:18PM +0000, Bruce  Johnson wrote:
> I’d mention that ‘rock in a pond’ is the same analogy that LIGO’s
> site uses…

It might even be appropriate for the case of nearly merged black
holes, where the spacetime deformations are strong and even the
topological structure changes during the final coalescence.  That's
the type of event that LIGO is designed to detect.  It might even be
comparable to a jumpspace emergence if you use the wormhole model.

For everything else, such as radiation from objects of human scale
moving with humanly tolerable accelerations, the analogy is completely
useless.

- Tim