We have just heard the space-time “pulse” of the rebirth of a black hole

We have just heard the space-time “pulse” of the rebirth of a black hole

Today will go down in history as the day when we directly discovered gravitational waves. The discovery made by scientists of scientific cooperation LIGO (LIGO) is an event worthy of the Nobel Prize, which is equal to or even surpasses the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 and the implementation of the theory of an expanding Universe in 1929.

“Now we can hear the Universe,” said physicist and LIGO representative Gabriela González during a historic meeting of the National Science Foundation on Thursday in Washington DC. “Detection is the beginning of a new era: the field of gravitational astronomy is now a reality.”

Although gravitational waves were first proposed by Einstein’s theory of general relativity a century ago, only now mankind has a technology capable of physically measuring this ripple in spacetime. Using a LIGO equipped with a laser interferometric gravitational-wave observatory, tiny space-time oscillations can be measured. And soon after the modernization of sensitivity in September last year, the Universe presented a gravitational gift to LIGO.

Gravitational waves are generated when massive objects are accelerated, collide or explode. If we can measure the gravitational wave of these events, then we can find out a lot about their properties and even use this knowledge for a new era of gravitational wave astronomy. This would be a paradigm shift from “ordinary” astronomy, which studies cosmic radiation from the electromagnetic spectrum; The spectrum of gravitational waves can reveal a “dark” Universe, where black holes collide, and neutron stars silently fly around each other in the night.

And on September 14, 2015, one of the largest, as it is believed, eruptions of gravitational waves in the Universe were discovered by the newly upgraded laser system LIGO.

At about 1.3 billion light years from Earth, two black holes were trapped in their mutual gravity well and began to rotate around each other at tremendous speed. Double black holes are considered an integral part of the cosmic landscape. But this was the first time that we were able to detect directly two black holes with a mass equal to 29 and 36 of our Suns before the merger. This amazing fusion can be seen through computer visualization.

However, their gravitational battle was short. In a split second, two rapidly rotating objects touched and splashed out furious energy. In an instant, black holes lost three masses of our Sun - this mass was transformed into pure gravitational energy.

If we recall our analogy with “throwing a pebble into a pond”, which we proposed to generate gravitational waves, then the situation with a black hole is as if to throw a large brick in a pond. At the same time there was a giant wave surge of gravitational energy, which produced this space-time ripples in the universe. Further 1.3 billion years later, these waves reached the Earth. And it just so happened that LIGO was just at that moment modernized, and ready to discover this ancient event. This is a cosmic intuitive insight in all its glory.

The theory suggests that when two black holes collide and merge, their signal gravitational wave should produce a very fast impulse, and slowing down is enough to hear this “pulsation” in a collision. And what do you think? Almost as predicted by computer models based on Einstein’s 100-year equation of relativity, the black hole “pulsed”. You can listen to:

This sound represents the moment when two spiral black holes merged into one. Such an event is believed to occur in the universe every 15 minutes. This is the real embodiment of the physical quest that physicists have completed in 100 years.

There is no question of the signal reliability, because this is only the beginning for observing such meetings. Especially since this “pulse” was predicted and it represents the true rebirth of a black hole.

When you sit and seriously think about it, it becomes difficult to understand that this is a signal from two black holes, flying through our planet. And in fact, this signal passes through each of us. This happened countless times, and will continue in the future. But now we have a special “hearing aid”, which will help to catch it. Moreover, thanks to the time taken by the two LIGO stations, we will know where it came from. Livingston station (Louisiana) heard the signal for 7 milliseconds to Hanford station (Washington), which means that it came from the southern celestial hemisphere.

The fact that we have a very rough knowledge of where the waves originated gives us an idea of ​​a potentially very “bright” future for astronomy of gravitational waves. If you add more stations to the network, you can increase the signal delay, and we will be able to locate the most gravitational regions of the Universe. And thanks to this, you can get access to the gravitational landscape of space. Who knows what other secrets we will reveal.

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