Gravitational wave detectors see two different black holes as they swallowed a neutron star
Astronomers using three different gravitational wave detectors have seen the gravity ripples caused when two different black holes swallowed a nearby neutron star.
The two gravitational-wave events, dubbed GW200105 and GW200115, rippled through detectors only 10 days apart, on January 5, 2020, and January 15, 2020, respectively.
Each merger involved a fairly small black hole (less than 10 Suns in heft) paired with an object between 1½ and 2 solar masses — right in the expected range for neutron stars. Observers caught no glow from the collisions, but given that both crashes happened roughly 900 million light-years away, spotting a flash was improbable, even if one happened — and it likely didn’t: The black holes are large enough that they would have gobbled the neutron stars whole instead of ripping them into bite-size pieces.
Note the time between the detection, in early 2020, and its announcement now, in mid-2021. The data is very complex and filled with a lot of noise, requiring many months of analysis to determine if a detection was made. For example, in a third case one detector was thought to have seen another such merger but scientists remain unsure. It might simply be noise in the system. I point this out to emphasize that thought they are much more confident in these new detections, there remains some uncertainty.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Astronomers using three different gravitational wave detectors have seen the gravity ripples caused when two different black holes swallowed a nearby neutron star.
The two gravitational-wave events, dubbed GW200105 and GW200115, rippled through detectors only 10 days apart, on January 5, 2020, and January 15, 2020, respectively.
Each merger involved a fairly small black hole (less than 10 Suns in heft) paired with an object between 1½ and 2 solar masses — right in the expected range for neutron stars. Observers caught no glow from the collisions, but given that both crashes happened roughly 900 million light-years away, spotting a flash was improbable, even if one happened — and it likely didn’t: The black holes are large enough that they would have gobbled the neutron stars whole instead of ripping them into bite-size pieces.
Note the time between the detection, in early 2020, and its announcement now, in mid-2021. The data is very complex and filled with a lot of noise, requiring many months of analysis to determine if a detection was made. For example, in a third case one detector was thought to have seen another such merger but scientists remain unsure. It might simply be noise in the system. I point this out to emphasize that thought they are much more confident in these new detections, there remains some uncertainty.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Does a gravity wave ripple travel at the speed of light? Since it is essentially massless and really not moving anything could it not, like quantum entanglement, cause instant indication no matter the distance?
Yes, it is same as the speed as light, that is covered in Einstein’s General Relativity theory.
born01930-
–the speed of light. Think fields. (If the Sun disappeared, we wouldn’t feel it for about 8 minutes.)
(entanglement is slightly different)
Q:
With 3 detectors, what kind of location precision can they get?
Is there an optical counterpart anyone has been investigating? (too small?)
A side-note, I recommend the book “Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson. It is a long book, and the National Geographic channel based their mini-series about Einstein on it. You learn about his life, his use of visualization, his work on the theory of Special Relativity, and years later on General Relativity. I also learned his famous equation was built on Charles Steinmetz’s equation for the mass of an electron.
It is a good read.
Wayne,
The Hanford LIGO site is about 80 miles away from me. I had to look up the second site and that is in Livingston, LA: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/facilities
According to their site, the detection difference between the two LIGO sites time-wise is ten milliseconds. KAGRA is the third site in Japan.
Yes I know entanglement is different, but it seems instantaneous across vast distances and used the comparison as a reference only. I was thinking of gravity similar to a fiber where you could feel a ripple because I have a hard time comprehending it as a wave. But I guess a ripple propagating along a fiber has a max speed. Using the fiber idea as an analogy only, like how you see emf lines of force using iron filings.
Jay-
Thanks. (very cool)
born01930-
(I’m just a psych major with a great interest, still learning!)
Totally empathize. It’s difficult to form a visual representation of what we believe is actually happening.
Quantum Field Theory says ‘everything is a field which has a value in space & time.’ Think magnetic-field and waves-
ref: “.. ripple propagating along a fiber has a max speed.” Yes, that is true, but–
Depends on what sort of ‘wave’ we are talking about, a fixed vibrating guitar string for example produces sound-waves, which do require ‘air’ to propagate through and at a max speed.
On the other hand, photons/ electromagnetic waves, gravity waves and the like, travel at the speed of light and require no medium through which to propagate.
Ref: entanglement.
might be enlightening–>
Quantum Entanglement and The No-Communication Theorem
https://youtu.be/TNnJee2qF-w
2:59
“Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. The “no-communication theorem or no-signaling principle” is a no-go theorem from quantum information theory which states that, during measurement of an entangled quantum state, it is not possible for one observer, by making a measurement of a subsystem of the total state, to communicate information to another observer. The theorem is important because, in quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement is an effect by which certain widely separated events can be correlated in ways that suggest the possibility of instantaneous communication.”