There were many rumors about the discovery of gravitational waves, but this time they acquired a specific, and possibly real, new turn. And moreover, by the end of this week we will learn the veracity of the astrophysical "duck". On Thursday (February 11) at 10:30 am a press announcement is planned by the National Science Foundation, announced under the pretext of the opportunity to bring together scientists from Caltech, MIT and the Scientific Commonwealth of LIGO, in order to combine them in attempts to detect the gravitational wave.
According to a version posted on social networks by Lawrence Krauss, the rumor about the discovery last month of a gravitational wave, this information came from a physicist who spoke to someone who saw an unpublished article describing a historical discovery. This sounds like unreliable information from third-party sources, but the details in the discussion are eerily specific.
“The scouts who saw the article claim that they saw information about gravitational waves from the confluence of a double black hole,” wrote the theoretical physicist at Canadian University McMaster in Hamilton and the Circular Institute of Theoretical Physics in Waterloo - Clifford Birgess, via e-mail to his faculty. This information was tweeted last week.
So the “black hole fusion” ... is interesting. But that is not all.
“They claim that two sensors found it in motion with the speed of light, obtained by the distance between them, and revealed a detection coefficient of 5, 1 sigma,” he continued. “The masses of the Black Holes were 36 and 29 solar masses initially, and 62 in late merge. Apparently the signal is very effective and they even saw the fall of the Kerr ring at the end. ” Burgess ended with the words: “Finally! (I hope)".
The news, as well as the previous rumors, is concentrated around the powerful Gravitational-Wave Observatory Laser Interferometer (LIGO), which was modernized in September 2015, in order to detect minimal hypothetical changes in space-time under the influence of gravitational waves. The LIGO, consisting of two stations located on opposite sides of the United States, is precisely tuned to detect gravitational waves passing through the amount of space available to us.
From the message of Burgess, we can understand some of the laws of physics described by him. If (IF!) The rumors are true, two LIGO stations (located in Louisiana and Washington) will detect a signal of one gravitational wave, with the expected time delay between two stations. This signal, moving at the speed of light, carries information about the phenomenon that creates these waves. Burgess also noted that the signal has a statistical value of 5, 1 sigma, exceeding the criterion of a real signal - this is probably a serious discovery. He also clarifies that an article on this issue will be published in the journal Nature on February 11 (Thursday), on the day of the meeting of the National Science Foundation.
Presumably, any acceleration of large masses in space will create space-time waves. For example, the collision of two black holes will be the center of the origin of gravitational waves. And the letter describes this - two black holes (36 and 29 times heavier than our Sun) collided and joined, creating a large black hole weighing 62 solar masses. He also hints that the gravitational wave signal is the result of the rotation of a black hole (Kerr black hole). Despite the fact that, of course, it is right to exercise caution and a decent share of skepticism when confronted with historical astrophysical discoveries, we must consider the sources through which information leaked. All sources are well-known specialists in physical sciences. Although it is obvious that they are not good at hiding news, they are trustworthy. However, none of these rumors were spread directly by one of the scientists of LIGO, but were descended from physicists who had seen or worked with the data of LIGO or who knew someone who had seen documents related to the discovery.
I remain skeptical about this information for the time being. But I hope that on Thursday, after the announcement of the National Science Foundation, we will have information about the first detected gravitational waves, 100 years after Einstein’s first assumption of their existence. In this case, we will be able to look into the future and really realize the significance of this discovery for astrophysics and astronomy. This will not only prove the existence of gravitational waves (even after those rather convincing, indirect evidence of their existence that already exists), we will also have a direct signal from the progenitor of all cosmic collisions, revealing (not theoretically) the secrets of black hole fusion and growth.
