The big Ligo discovery of 2015 of two inspiraling black holes revealed that about 5% of the total mass of the system…

The big Ligo discovery of 2015 of two inspiraling black holes revealed that about 5% of the total mass of the system was radiated away as gravitational waves. Ethan’s article does a nice job explaining that this energy came from potential energy rather than mass escaping from the singularity. My favorite part was his discussion of how varying the mass and spin parameters of a black hole merger could change the percentage of mass/energy loss.

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-how-do-gravitational-waves-escape-from-a-black-hole-782eaa6005de

17 replies on “The big Ligo discovery of 2015 of two inspiraling black holes revealed that about 5% of the total mass of the system…”

  1. Prachi Shukla the light from a black hole system does not come from the black hole itself. It comes from the hot accretion disk spinning around the black hole, heated to dramatic temperatures by friction

  2. Sultan Salahuddin that picture is just a simulation, not a photo. The gravity wave detected in 2015 that the article refers to is from black holes very very far away, millions of light years. We can’t actually see them or their host galaxy

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