Two massive bodies orbit one another - the interaction is
gravitational. As their positions change, the gravitational field due
to their mass-energy must change. But it can't change instantaneously
at distant points; the change propagates outward at the speed of light.
This is a wave in the metric of space time and it carries energy. The
energy comes from the orbiting bodies mass-energy so the final black
hole has less mass than the constituents.
Brent
On 2/12/2016 10:00 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:
Sure, but John said the black holes lost 3 solar masses, which was
converted into gravitational waves... how? Fusion and fission are easy
examples of mass to energy conversion - so what's the specific
interaction here according to theory?
On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 10:49 PM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
The interaction is gravitational. The first experimental evidence
for gravitational waves was the correct derivation of the observed
orbital decay of a double star due to energy radiated as
gravitational waves.
Brent
On 2/12/2016 4:57 AM, Terren Suydam 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? I wasn't aware that any energy was "spent" creating a
gravitational wave, much less three solar-masses worth, in this
case.
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 8:23 PM, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 7:30 PM, Terren Suydam
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>wrote:
β > β
As amazing as detecting the gravitational waves are, I'm
actually more interested in what happens when those two
black holes collide... is the resulting explosion
entirely contained in the event horizon or is there any
possibility that matter/energy can escape due to the high
energies involved?
βIt wasn't an explosion if anything it was an implosion and
the results were not contained within the event horizon, if
they were we wouldn't have been able to detect it. What we
detected was a 36 solar mass black hole merging with
a 29 solar mass black hole and producing a 62 solar mass
black hole with the missing 3 solar masses being converted
into energy in the form of gravitational waves, which is what
LIGO saw. It all happened in a fifth of a second. If 3 solar
masses had been converted to light instead of gravitational
waves during that fifth of a second it would have been
brighter than the rest of the universe put together.
John K Clark
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