The LIGO project discovered a third event in which gravitational waves were created - ripples in space and time, confirming the new window that has opened for astronomers. As in the case of the first two apparitions, gravitational waves were created when two black holes collided to form a larger black hole.
Illustration illustrating what two merging black holes look like similar to those detected by LIGO. The black holes rotate misaligned meaning they have different orientations relative to the general motion of the binary orbit. LIGO has found clues that the orbit of at least one black hole in the GW170104 system was previously undetected through its orbital motion before it merged with its partner. Image: LIGO / Caltech / MIT / Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)
The LIGO facility - Laser Gravitational-wave Observatory discovered a third event of gravitational waves, ripples in space and time, and proved that a new window in astronomy has indeed opened. As in the case of the first two discoveries, the gravitational waves were created when two black holes collided to form a larger black hole.
The new black hole, created by the merger, has a mass 49 times that of our Sun. This figure fills the gap between the two previous events - in the first it was 62 solar masses and in the second case 21.
"We have another confirmation of the existence of black holes with a stellar mass, larger than 20 solar masses. These are objects we didn't know existed before LIGO detected them," says David Shoemaker, an astronomer from MIT, and the spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Department - a body of more than 1,000 international scientists who conduct research using LIGO together with the European Virgo partnership. "It's amazing because humans can hypothesize and test it about strange and extreme events that happened billions of years ago and are billions of light years away from us. This is thanks to LIGO and Virgo.”
The new detection occurred during LIGO's current observing run, which began on November 30, 2016, and will continue through the summer. LIGO is an international partnership that makes observations by twin detectors—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—operated by Caltech and MIT with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
LIGO was the first instrument to make a direct observation of gravitational waves in September 2015 during the first observation run of this facility. Since then the facility has undergone upgrades. The second detection was made in December 2015. The third detection, called GW170104 discovered on January 4, 2017, is described in a new paper accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters.
In all three cases, each of LIGO's twin detectors detected gravitational waves from the enormously energetic merger of black hole pairs. These are collisions that produce more energy than all the stars and galaxies in the universe at any given time. The latest detection appears to be the most distant, with the black holes located about three billion light-years away. (The black holes in the first and second detection are 1.3 and 1.4 billion light years away, respectively).
The newest observation also provides clues about the directions in which the black holes are spinning. As all pairs of black holes revolve around each other, they also spin on their own axes - like a pair of ice skaters spinning separately as they orbit each other. Sometimes black holes spin in the same general orbital direction and sometimes they spin in the opposite direction of orbital motion. Furthermore, black holes can also be tilted from the orbital plane. In fact, black holes can spin in any direction.
The new LIGO data cannot determine whether the recently observed black holes were tilted, but they suggest that at least one of the black holes may be misaligned compared to the general motion of the system's orbit. Further observations with LIGO will be required to know more about the spin of binary black holes.
More on the subject on the science website
- First evidence of gravitational waves
- Have gravitational waves been found?
- An attentive ear to the echoes of the Big Bang
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I agree with the opinion of the scientific commentators that in fact much is hidden about what happened in the LIGO facilities. What is known is that there was a tiny disturbance that was discovered in the facilities, but what is the explanation for them is shrouded in fog. I would not build a barbed wire of explanations based on an event that happened in a very short time and cannot be re-examined. It is not acceptable for me to establish facts according to the physics we know under normal conditions (in which the laws have been tested) when it is not at all clear how the laws behave in the aforementioned extreme conditions of enormous mass, huge density, time distances and physical distances of billions. Most of the stuff here is nothing more than guesswork.
Please respond gently
Yehuda
We are in the Matrix - everything is a simulation
A very beautiful illustration but not realistic. The depth effect that looks like a reflection from the side of a bowl is not possible in reality, because there are no darker and brighter areas in the above-mentioned way, there is no meaning to the direction of light that supposedly reaches the stars and only some of them are reflected and some are not. The light comes from all the stars and is not reflected back from them. And if it is meant to be about clusters of stars that happen to create the aforementioned optical illusion - then it's really funny.
I have a proposal for an answer to the question I asked on 5-6-17 to say:
In what form is the tremendous energy resulting from the merger of the black holes emitted?
One answer was given by "changes in the energy of gravity" (perhaps "deer"?) to say:
Gravitational waves, which cause the reduction of the mass of black holes, in an unknown mechanism.
A second answer that comes to mind now is:
The energy a.m. The tremendous emitted as a result of the collision of the two absorption disks surrounding the two black holes.
It really can be an explosion like no other in nature.
Even more powerful than a supernova.
LIGO = Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory
Sorry, autocorrect on mobile
LIFE = Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory
Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. The speed of light is a very special speed in nature, but it is not unique to light, there are other particles and forces that move in it.
Regarding my father's question, it can't really be answered. We study black holes on two levels - by sky observations, and by mathematical theoretical research (in which we try to build models that describe black holes and then find ways to test them against reality). Of course, the question you answered cannot be answered observationally because we are outside the black hole and therefore (to the point of emission of Hawking radiation which is so weak that it is practically invisible) we cannot know anything about what is happening inside. We know that the event horizons have merged into a common horizon, but cannot extract from observations information about what is happening inside. On the mathematical side, the question can be attempted, and I suppose that people from the field (that is, astrophysicists who study the behavior of black holes in the sky) will be able to say a few things about it, but at best it will be a very difficult question because the mathematical models available to us now (general relativity) cannot describe The end of the process where the singularities of the two holes are close (because then there are quantum effects), and even before that I assume that the problem can only be attacked numerically because the equations of motion are non-linear and in principle unsolvable.
So in conclusion - what happened inside, we don't really know. On the other hand, in recent years we realize that even without collisions we don't really understand what happens inside the event horizon of a black hole, so this question is less relevant than you think.
Black holes are like Niagara…. And whoosh
How fast do gravitational waves propagate?
The energy that comes from a black hole is gravitational. That is, negative.
Negative energy changes in gravitational energy can "emanate" from a black hole, for example the gravitational field in its presence.
can be positive. These are gravitational waves that reduce the mass of the black hole.
What is the process in which the mass of the hole (positive size) that is concentrated at a point turns into gravitational waves, is not clear.
Another question from the quantum field is whether gravitational waves that no one observes are a collection of probabilities?
The existence of gravitational waves will be more convincing when they are able to identify a correlation between them and an optical observation focused on a certain place in the sky, and perhaps observe a burst of X-rays from that place at the same time.
Quote from the article:
"...these are collisions that produce more energy than all the stars and galaxies in the universe at any given time..."
Three comments/questions:
A). In what forms is this enormous energy released from the event horizons of black holes? Is all or most of it emitted by the energy of gravity waves?
After all, in principle, energy cannot be emitted from the event horizons of black holes.
(Except for Hawking radiation which:
A). Its existence has not yet been proven.
b) Its strength is expected to be extremely weak).
as well,
Also according to the theory, gravitational waves are powerful and have extremely weak energy.
b) In my opinion, the statement should be qualified and limited at most to the "visible universe" and not to the "whole universe".
This is despite the fact that I am familiar with the concept that holds that what is beyond the visible universe are actually separate/parallel universes.
3). What does the theory predict the effect of the merger of the black holes (if any?) on the stars in their environment, in the galaxy in which they are located?
It is not clear from the article if the black holes have merged into one point hole, or if they are rotating around each other.
Is there a situation that their nuclei revolve around each other within an event horizon common to both...