On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 7:57 AM, Terren Suydam <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I thought the gravitational waves were generated as the black holes > rotated around one another, not (merely) as a consequence of the collision. > Also, what kinds of interactions transfer the energy/mass of the black > holes themselves into gravitational waves? > Every time a mass accelerates gravity waves are produced, the greater the mass and the faster the acceleration the stronger the wave. Even the Earth produces a very small amount of Gravitational Waves as it accelerates in its orbit around the sun, and the energy to produce the waves comes from slowing down Earth's orbital speed and the orbit shrinks as a result, but not by much. Each year the Earth gets 3.5×10^−13 meters closer to the sun due to gravity waves , about 1/300 the diameter of a hydrogen atom. When 2 black holes merge most of the waves are produced in a phase called "ring down"; when they first merge they are irregularly shaped but black holes want to be spherical and so start vibrating radically and that produces the most intense gravity waves in the universe , but after about a fifth of a second they have stop vibrating and got ten rid of their irregularities and become spherical. It took 3 solar masses of energy to produce those gravity waves, if it had been light produced not gravity waves during that fifth of a second it would have been 50 times brighter than everything else in the observable universe put together . John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
