Gravitational waves from black hole merger

News that twin LIGO stations detected gravitational waves from nearby binary black hole merger may confirm previous rumors. Apparently, two black holes of 36 and 29 solar masses merged to create a more massive black hole with a mass of 62 solar masses (sigma=5.1).
Paper about this discovery will be published by the journal Nature tomorrow (Feb. 11), coinciding with the National Science Foundation’s meeting on the same day.

http://www.space.com/31870-more-gravitational-wave-rumors-colliding-black-holes.html

 

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Surprised if it turns out not to be a drill exercise i.e. fake signals meant to keep the teams sharp. The table on p9 of a somewhat old study here: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0204090
has such an enormous spread for estimated rates for say NS-NS merger events, as to be worthless, otoh ~ 'stellar mass' BH-BH mergers within clusters (globular clusters?) estimate is (by comparison!) relatively tight and suggests a veritable flood of detection events over even a single month run. Maybe there has been drastic refinements since but if so such would likely be driven by absence of evidence in the interim. Wash-up will be interesting either way.

 

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I read somewhere that this event apparently "gave off more energy than the rest of the universe combined"... which makes sense in a way - the high-speed collision of two bodies of super-high (could one claim near-infinite?) mass... I mean, damn!

 

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It had more power than the output of the rest of the universe. Due to it's brief nature, the energy was the equivalent of converting the mass of 3 Suns into energy.

 

No.
From the OP : "Two black holes of 36 and 29 solar masses merged to create a more massive black hole with a mass of 62 solar masses..."
Check with Fraggle Rocker, but to state "near-infinite" basically is the same as not-infinite, which is basically the same as finite.

At any rate, 36, 29 or even 62 Solar Masses would not necessarily be considered "super-high mass"...

To Wit :

^^above quoted^^ from(and much more at) : http://www.cosmotography.com/images/supermassive_blackholes_drive_galaxy_evolution_2.html

More info also at : http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ghezgroup/gc/journey/smbh.html

 

That actually makes perfect sense, because something so massive moving quickly has substantial mass/energy tied up in inertia (rotational AND linear) which ALL eventually becomes part of the coalesced mass/energy with no means of escape beyond the coalesced event horizon, other than to emit gravity waves before the merge.

 

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211

Based on the observed signals, LIGO scientists estimate that the black holes for this event were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, and the event took place 1.3 billion years ago. About 3 times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves in a fraction of a second—with a peak power output about 50 times that of the whole visible universe. By looking at the time of arrival of the signals—the detector in Livingston recorded the event 7 milliseconds before the detector in Hanford—scientists can say that the source was located in the Southern Hemisphere.
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A near infinite power output one could say.

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And probably what Kittamaru was meaning in his post I suggest.

 

The above analysis of the situation with merging black hole binaries is a pretty strong hint that rapid kinetic rotation of masses is probably the easiest way to couple sufficient energy into the vacuum to produce gravity waves. It is a hint that rotation is a dynamic of the field to which it couples. A lot of little spins (in the rest of the field) that spread out from the event like ripples in a pond would be one model of what happens. What appears to be happening with large curvatures can be decomposed into a collection of little distributed rotations in the field with the same overall effect, under certain other conditions. Rotations that hint at the origin of time itself.

The field that caused the binaries to coalesce in the first place accomplishes a similar trick, most likely by means of the same mechanism which imparts inertia to every particle of mass the binaries contain. Those particles all have shapes which strongly suggest that rotation is a dynamic of whatever process gives them inertia in a universe of energy events.

The similarities to the decay of an atom of positronium should probably not be ignored, including the idea that it requires JUST A LITTLE MORE energy than the particles' combined masses in order for the process to happen in reverse.

First Higgs. Now this. If only there were a way to put G-d himself in the exact geometric center of things on both scales, and spinning at the speed of light, there would be no stopping this idea. So, work on it. Lederman's publisher must have had a direct connection.

G-d doesn't just love geometry. G-d IS geometry, evidently. That's the reason Valentine's Day is all about a preoccupation with curves and contours. Prove it isn't. Good luck.

 

I think we should just not the non sequitor and walk away.

 

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.03868v1.pdf

Swift follow-up of the Gravitational Wave source GW150914

ABSTRACT
The Advanced LIGO observatory recently reported the first direct detection of gravitational waves. We report on observations taken with the Swift satellite two days after the GW trigger. No new X-ray, optical, UV or hard X-ray sources were detected in our observations, which were focussed on nearby galaxies in the gravitational wave error region and we discuss the implications of this.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The XRT observations covered 4.7 square degrees, and contained 2% of the probability from the final ‘LALInterence’ ALIGO error region (8% if this is convolved with the GWGC). However, Abbott et al. (2016) reported that the most likely source of the GW event is a binary black-hole trigger at 500 Mpc. Since the GWGC only extends to 100 Mpc and the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes is not expected to produce EM radiation, our lack of detection is not surprising. Fermi-GBM reported a possible low significance gamma-ray event coincident with the ALIGO trigger (Blackburn et al. 2015), Connaughton et al (2016, this arXiv listing), although this was not detected by INTEGRAL (Ferrigno et al. 2015). No corresponding signal was seeen by the Swift-BAT, however since none of the ALIGO error region was in the BAT field of view at the time of the trigger, this is not surprising. Although the Swift observations did not yield the detection of an EM counterpart to the GW trigger, we have demonstrated that we are able to respond very rapidly to GW triggers with Swift: the 3 X-ray sources we detected were reported to the GW-EM community within 15 hours of the trigger being announced. In the event of a nearby binary neutron-star merger triggering ALIGO, such rapid response, analysis and dissemination will be vital. It is also evident that the decisions made regarding where to observe with Swift are best informed if details such as estimated distances and masses are available rapidly from the GW teams, as noted by the GW-EM summary paper (this arXiv mailing), and it is expected that the latencies in deriving these parameters will be reduced in the future. We have also commissioned new observing modes with Swift which will allow us to perform much more extensive follow-up observations of future GW triggers

 

By far the best SINGLE article on the GW discovery event:

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/eleme...exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them

That tiny snippet of audio you listened to took place in REAL TIME 0.2 seconds (something the other sources failed to even mention) and at the same time it occurred, there was a major lighting strike in Africa. Fortunately, magnetometers were in place to enable the teams to rule out this event from what they recorded.

Lots of other smaller events were also recorded by the detectors, but this one is the only one big enough that they are five sigma certain it was a gravity wave. A statistical analysis of the other sources they are detecting should be getting some extra attention about now.

Any lightning strike on the Earth couples to everything else electrical in nature (and in particular the ionosphere) by means of interaction with the Earth's own magnetic field. I hope the LIGO power filtering was as rigorously monitored as their magnetometers, because the acoustic signature of a lightning strike is very, very similar to this. Multiple strikes to and from the ground can take place in the space of about 0.2 seconds.

Is 0.2 seconds REALLY enough time for a couple of black holes this size to merge, as viewed by an observer 1.3 billion miles away? Aren't these processes supposed to take just a little longer from start to finish? What would this process resemble if you were close enough to observe it optically? Since when does anything that big in this universe move that fast, even when they are that close? The Hulse-Taylor binary doesn't look anything like this yet, but I'm certain it will be spectacular when they merge.

 

Yes.

By what logic?

When they have the gravity of 60 suns and are mere light-micro-seconds apart.

It sounds like you are comparing this to "common experience". What common experience do we have with merging black holes?

 

Point taken.

By this "common experience." Supernovas seem to take much longer to peak.

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/61872/how-long-does-a-supernova-last

The chart can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparative_supernova_type_light_curves.png

 

Supernovae explode as a force against gravity. Black holes merging are the result of gravity. The phenomenon is a positive feedback loop (the more there is, the more there is).

And let's not forget, we are dealing with the most powerful gravity in the universe. Even light cannot escape its pull. Whereas, light escapes a supernova with ... a modicum of enthusiasm.

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That ought to give you an indication of the gulf between SN forces and BH forces.

 

And latest data suggests that at times, depending on various aspects, a S/N is not occurring before a BH is formed.
[I'm sure there's a thread somewhere on that over the last month or so: I'm feeling rather lazy to check and link for you.]

 

The merged 62 solar mass black hole is reputedly the approximate size of the state of Maine, and that actually does check with the brevity of the event.

I was interested in what audio processing was done to make the signal something we could hear. Now we know.

 

I'm still convinced this was genuine, and have a greater appreciation to the lengths to which one needs to go in order to detect gravity waves. No wonder it took 100 years.

 

I am sure the physics community is breathing a sigh of relief to hear that...

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Please read the other thread and how all contingencies were allowed for and covered.

 

Lets get to the brasstracks...

You can't possibly get two suns at light-micro-seconds apart, leave aside getting two BHs of around 30 Solar masses so close.

Please note that a BH of 30 Solar mass, would call for a very huge original star, and you do not find two or more such huge starts in close vicinity, even otherwise whichever forms first would not let the other guy form, it will eat it up before it becomes the BH. So what could be possible is two BHs strayed closer by the funny twist of nature....