I think it is more likely the Earth burped. Harry
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Rich Murray <rmfor...@gmail.com> wrote: > maybe the best account and video of first LIGO gravity wave 2015.09.14: > The New Yorker: Rich Murray 2016.02.11 > > http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2016/02/maybe-best-account-and-video-of-first.html > > > > http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them > > [ about 1 minute video, time slowed down about 100X -- the two black holes > spiral around each other, making 11 half-turns before merging suddenly > the black holes are invisible, so we see their twisted space-time showing > highly distorted swirling views of their far away galactic background -- > this happened > 1.3 billion years away ( 1.3 billion years ago -- our nearest neighbor > galaxy Andromeda is about 2.2 million lightyears away ( 2.2 million years > old from us -- our galaxy is about 0.1 million lightyears wide... ] > > TODAY 10:30 AM > Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally > Found Them > BY NICOLA TWILLEY > > "Just over a billion years ago, many millions of galaxies from here, a > pair of black holes collided. > They had been circling each other for aeons, in a sort of mating dance, > gathering pace with each orbit, hurtling closer and closer. > By the time they were a few hundred miles apart, they were whipping around > at nearly the speed of light, releasing great shudders of gravitational > energy. > Space and time became distorted, like water at a rolling boil. > In the fraction of a second that it took for the black holes to finally > merge, they radiated a hundred times more energy than all the stars in the > universe combined. They formed a new black hole, sixty-two times as heavy > as our sun and almost as wide across as the state of Maine. > As it smoothed itself out, assuming the shape of a slightly flattened > sphere, a few last quivers of energy escaped. > Then space and time became silent again." > > [ Another source says they reached a top speed of half the speed of light > as they merged... ] > > "On Sunday, September 13th, Effler spent the day at the Livingston site > with a colleague, finishing a battery of last-minute tests. > “We yelled, we vibrated things with shakers, we tapped on things, we > introduced magnetic radiation, we did all kinds of things,” she said. “And, > of course, everything was taking longer than it was supposed to.” > At four in the morning, with one test still left to do — a simulation of a > truck driver hitting his brakes nearby — they decided to pack it in. > They drove home, leaving the instrument to gather data in peace. > The signal arrived not long after, at 4:50 A.M. local time, passing > through the two detectors within seven milliseconds of each other. > [ In Louisiana and in Oregon, 1,865 miles apart ] > It was four days before the start of Advanced LIGO’s first official run." > > "Since the September 14th detection, LIGO has continued to observe > candidate signals, although none are quite as dramatic as the first event. > “The reason we are making all this fuss is because of the big guy,” Weiss > said. “But we’re very happy that there are other, smaller ones, because it > says this is not some unique, crazy, cuckoo effect.” > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO > > > "These sites are separated by 3,002 kilometers (1,865 miles). > Since gravitational waves are expected to travel at the speed of light, > this distance corresponds to a difference in gravitational wave arrival > times of up to ten milliseconds." > > "After an equivalent of approximately 75 trips down the 4 km length to the > far mirrors and back again, the two separate beams leave the arms and > recombine at the beam splitter." > > "Based on current models of astronomical events, and the predictions of > the general theory of relativity, gravitational waves that originate tens > of millions of light years from Earth are expected to distort the 4 > kilometer mirror spacing by about 10E−18 m, less than one-thousandth the > charge diameter of a proton. Equivalently, this is a relative change in > distance of approximately one part in 10E 21. > A typical event which might cause a detection event would be the late > stage inspiral and merger of two 10 solar mass black holes, not necessarily > located in the Milky Way galaxy, which is expected to result in a very > specific sequence of signals often summarized by the slogan chirp, burst, > quasi-normal mode ringing, exponential decay." > > > > http://www.nature.com/news/einstein-s-gravitational-waves-found-at-last-1.19361 > > "One black hole was about 36 times the mass of the Sun, and the other was > about 29 solar masses. > As they spiraled inexorably into one another, they merged into a single, > more-massive gravitational sink in space-time that weighed 62 solar masses, > the LIGO team estimates." > [ So, 3 solar masses was radiated away as invisible gravitational energy > -- about 5 % conversion of mass into pure energy... ] > > > >