Gravitational Waves - Updates today!

[Dryson]

By running into each other, surely.

That isn't a scientific reply at all.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

That isn't a scientific reply at all.

Sure it is...........

Two black holes met in a bar.

The rest is a singularity

 

[Silvercrest]

That isn't a scientific reply at all.

Ha! Ha! Good one! What else you got?

 

[Dryson]

Do Gravitational Waves created by two merging black holes last forever?

Is it possible to determine how much mass is inside of the black hole based on how strong the gravitational wave is?

If LIGO detected the first gravitational wave using lasers couldn't a satellite in orbit around Earth create a map of the gravitational field of Earth as well as the rest of the solar system based on gravitational waves cause a laser to fluctuate where the fluctuation would determine the relative strengths of the gravity encountered?

 

[lpetrich]

I've found the journal paper on this discovery: Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 (2016) - Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0×10^−21. It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203 000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1σ. The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410+160−180 Mpc corresponding to a redshift z=0.09+0.03−0.04. In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are 36+5−4 M⊙ and 29+4−4 M⊙, and the final black hole mass is 62+4−4 M⊙, with 3.0+0.5−0.5 M⊙c^2 radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

That distance is 1.33 +0.52-0.59 billion light years

Collection of LIGO Papers
GW150914: First results from the search for binary black hole coalescence with Advanced LIGO
Mentions not only the famous 2015 Sep 14 event, but also another event on 2015 Oct 12. That event was much weaker, with a statistical significance of 2.1 standard deviations and a false-alarm rate of 0.44 per year (once ever 2 1/4 years).

That event has black-hole masses 23+18-5 and 13+4-5 solar masses and a distance of 1100+500-500 megaparsecs or 3.6+-1.6 billion light years.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

OK I want my graviton generator now dammit