[time-nuts] LIGO detects gravitational waves

Tom Van Baak tvb at LeapSecond.com
Sat Feb 13 19:12:01 EST 2016


Bill,

The signal drops off because what was once two separate rapidly accelerating orbiting binary black holes has now merged into fat one. They talk of inspiral, merger and ringdown phases.

There's a 1 minute video http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-NINJA2/ that shows this nicely.

To me it sounds like what happens when you play with two round "rattle snake" magnets. They don't just clump together quietly; instead they hit and bounce and ring, changing frequency over a second or two, until they stick together for good.

/tvb

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Hawkins" <bill.iaxs at pobox.com>
To: "'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement'" <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2016 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] LIGO detects gravitational waves


> IMHO, the decay seems backwards because we are watching the growth of
> the event as the black holes approach each other, reaching a maximum at
> collision.
> 
> Don't know why the signal drops off after the collision. May be because
> gravity stops changing, or maybe because the resulting object left the
> universe - well, not if mass and energy are conserved. Or did the wave
> contain all of the radiated energy?
> 
> Disclaimer: My field of study was not physics.
> 
> Bill Hawkins 



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