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A question I have is "We know gravitational waves exist, but how do we detect them?"

"I have heard astronomers talk about gravitational waves being created when two black holes collide or when two neutron stars collide."

  • note that this question idea is not complete
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    $\begingroup$ Meta is not a sandbox for you to pitch every question you have. I mentioned this under my last answer. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 2:32
  • $\begingroup$ again can't ask questions on main $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 2:35
  • $\begingroup$ How did you expect posting on meta to solve that though? You won't get answers to that here, and it's just consuming a lot of peoples' time since it's extremely clear that you hadn't tried searching the site for similar questions. (Or the rest of the internet for that matter, since it's a very common question and is addressed by dozens of articles) You're also submerging important meta questions. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:20
  • $\begingroup$ The rate restrictions are imposed to suggest that you should take some time off to think about why the questions weren't well-received, and to think about how to write better questions. Asking the questions you have on meta and saying "Can I ask this?" is making other people try to fix those questions and direct you to duplicates with answers, which, in my opinion, isn't good form. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:26
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    $\begingroup$ I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because I don't think it's appropriate to regularly use meta as a sandbox for questions. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:29
  • $\begingroup$ @Chair I checked if this question was a duplicate and it is not $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:36
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    $\begingroup$ I think you're missing my point... it's not the downvoters' fault, as you seem to imply. You asked why your questions are downvoted, and you got the reasons why people don't think your questions should be posted in that form. Regarding the duplicate, I strongly believe that you didn't search, because the posts linked in rob's answer are exact duplicates. Perhaps you're using the wrong search terms? try "how do we detect gravitational waves physics stack exchange" on google. I just tried that; it works. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:40
  • $\begingroup$ I think you missed the this idea is not complete part of my question and i have a Search engine you do not have $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:42
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    $\begingroup$ I don't want to continue this discussion. It doesn't matter if you have some fancy access to hard-to-find resources. There are free, accessible stuff indexed by google, and it's very unlikely that you can't use those instead. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:46
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    $\begingroup$ I'm sorry, this is beginning to sound like you're fabricating your side of this discussion. I've told you that you should simply use google, and resort to that 'supposed' slow search engine only when the standard one doesn't work. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:48
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    $\begingroup$ I don't get it? You're banned on main, so now you're asking questions on meta about questions that you can't even ask right now on main? Can you see how this might seem like you're wasting people's time here? By the way, Chair was just explaining that they were able to use google and find the thing you couldn't find with your special search engine. If this special search engine isn't giving you good hits on this site, it makes sense to use something that is known to work pretty well, like google. $\endgroup$
    – JMac
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 14:25
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    $\begingroup$ @Luna You seem to be ignoring or missing the point every time. The speed of your search engine isn't that relevant here. We are talking about the quality of results. It doesn't matter how fast the search engine is if it can't find what you are looking for. It defeats the purpose. That is why Chair suggested using google instead of this "personal search engine"; because clearly your personal search engine cannot be trusted to give good results for physics stack exchange. $\endgroup$
    – JMac
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 17:06
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    $\begingroup$ Google (and presumably the other staples like yahoo/bing) is not that slow. If you actually have some fancy search engine (which I doubt), you can still use google without loosing too much time. I strongly doubt that you (or anyone) will be able to do anything meaningful in that kind of a time difference. I've said this before and I'll say it again... if you're making a lot of this up, it's really not helping your cause and it certainly won't get you closer to writing well-received questions. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 10:09
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    $\begingroup$ @Luna If you would have taken the time you spend on Meta, to search on Google instead, you would have learned a whole lot more about gravitational waves and how they are detected. Even the wikipedia article starts out with it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational-wave_observatory $\endgroup$
    – fishinear
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 16:13
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    $\begingroup$ The comments on this post were getting a little out of control. I've deleted some entirely irrelevant ones. $\endgroup$
    – David Z Mod
    Commented Feb 3, 2019 at 2:57

2 Answers 2

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  1. In general, any topic for which a tag exists is not categorically off-topic. In this case, there already 723 questions tagged gravitational-waves, 580 of which are not closed, so it seems safe to say that such questions are allowed.

  2. If you are just looking for basic information about a topic, as in that you know the name but not much else, we generally expect you to show due diligence in doing prior research, which at the very least includes looking for (and reading) the Wikipedia article on the topic, if one exists, and searching the internet for your question or keywords from it with your favourite search engine. If you have done so and still feel there's something left to know, it is essential that you reference the knowledge you already have. Only that way answerers will know what they need to explain, and only that way can questions become focused enough so that they are not effectively asking for a book-length introduction to the topic.

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  • $\begingroup$ ok thank you, my question about magnets on main needs more attention can I do anything to help with that? $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 19:11
  • $\begingroup$ @Luna see physics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/9245/50583 $\endgroup$
    – ACuriousMind Mod
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 19:21
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    $\begingroup$ There are a few tags that I would consider exceptions to your point #1, like soft-question and mathematics - that is, for those particular tags, I would not advise a person to take the existence of the tag as evidence in favor of a question on that topic being within the site's scope. $\endgroup$
    – David Z Mod
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 20:08
  • $\begingroup$ Ok @DavidZ I assume you have read most or all of my questions I have seen you on a lot of them $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 20:11
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidZ If you want to get pedantic, then soft-question is not a "topic", so my #1 doesn't apply to it :P $\endgroup$
    – ACuriousMind Mod
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 20:14
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    $\begingroup$ Ah, yes that's true. :-) But I wouldn't trust that everyone is going to make that distinction in the same way - that is, people might take the existence of the tag as an indicator that it's fine to ask soft questions, and I think it's worth pointing out that that's not the case for that particular tag. $\endgroup$
    – David Z Mod
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 20:15
  • $\begingroup$ I am not sure if you were responding to both comments or not $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 20:18
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidZ were you addressing both of us? $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 20:23
  • $\begingroup$ wait are you saing my 4D one when it had voloume it was not off topic $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 22:01
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ACuriousMind has given a good answer to your question in general.

To address your proposed question specifically, searching the tag for "detect" brings up this poor question and this better question among about four hundred others. The question as you describe it here sounds like an exact duplicate of the first, but a helpful flagger might link it to another more comprehensive question like the second.

For what it's worth, repeatedly asking "would such-and-such a question be on-topic?" is not really a good use of Meta. It's worked out for you twice now, but a better long-term strategy is for you to spend more time reading good questions on the subjects that interest you.

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  • $\begingroup$ I only asked because I had to wait to ask a question on main $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 23:12
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    $\begingroup$ @Luna You can get the list of your deleted questions here: physics.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/… . Check the list now, and save their links somewhere! Later you won't have any way to get access to the list of your deleted posts any more! But if you save them now, later you might be able to fix them and even get an undelete. $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 10:21
  • $\begingroup$ @peterh I have no deleted question $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 22:07
  • $\begingroup$ @Luna Then you have no reason to complain, the system treats you well. At least this is what I see on your scores. Well, I think that 4d object volume question shouldn't have been closed as homework, it was clearly not a homework. It might be "too broad", although I think a clear answer still could be given. The problem is that you need to learn integrals with multiple variables to calculate it, and you probably can't do that. But believe me, it is really easy (at least in theory, for physical objects). $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 22:24
  • $\begingroup$ 1 - voted question will prevent me from asking eventually $\endgroup$
    – Little Bowsette
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 22:28
  • $\begingroup$ @Luna It is bad. Can you ask questions now? $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 22:29
  • $\begingroup$ @Luna As far I know, there are multiple question bans depending on, how bad are your scores. You are probably in the lightest one, so you will likely out in some weeks. Try to collect rep by writing answers. $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Commented Feb 2, 2019 at 22:32

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