Robert J. Chassell asked:
>
> Does an otherwise isolated planetary/stellar system
> give off gravity waves? In other words, must such
> gravity waves be counted as part of the system?
>
Yes, I think you must count them.
> I have heard it said that the measurements of the changing
> orbits of some binary neutron stars suggest that they are
> giving off gravity waves, so that to conserve the total
> energy of their system, their
> angular momentum must decrease. Is this true?
>
Hmmm.... Fact: it was observed that the period of some
binary stars decreased with time. So, something must
be taking away angular momentum from them. One explanation
could be those gravitational waves, that are *very* weak
and very hard to measure [AFAIK, the experiments to
measure them are still unconclusive].
But there are other, simpler, mechanisms to explain an
apparent loss of angular momentum, for example, by taking
into account matter that is ejected from the stars.
Alberto Monteiro
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