Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo

[Eugene]

Source: Caltech

Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo

News Release • September 27, 2017

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector, and highlights the scientific potential of a three-detector network of gravitational-wave detectors.

The three-detector observation was made on August 14, 2017 at 10:30:43 UTC. The two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Virgo detector, located near Pisa, Italy, detected a transient gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes.

A paper about the event, known as GW170814, has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The detected gravitational waves—ripples in space and time—were emitted during the final moments of the merger of two black holes with masses about 31 and 25 times the mass of the sun and located about 1.8 billion light-years away. The newly produced spinning black hole has about 53 times the mass of our sun, which means that about 3 solar masses were converted into gravitational-wave energy during the coalescence.

“This is just the beginning of observations with the network enabled by Virgo and LIGO working together,” says David Shoemaker of MIT, LSC spokesperson. “With the next observing run planned for Fall 2018 we can expect such detections weekly or even more often.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20170927

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Releated: GW170814 : A three-detector observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole coalescence

(The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and The Virgo Collaboration)

[rurallib]

1. That is mind blowing.

Thanks for posting this

[Duppers]

4. Truly is.

And significant in many ways.

[longship]

2. I predict a Nobel Prize in physics for LIGO someday.

It is the last confirmation of Einstein's General Relativity, which has yet to see a disconfirming experiment.

But as we are now at the end of new confirmations for the Standard Model of quantum field theory with confirmation of the Higgs field, we are likewise at a similar end for General Relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation.

The hope is that somehow these two bodies of theory can be merged. Yet even though there are top people working on these problems, we seem to be far from a solution, if one is even possible. However, that seems to be the next (rather huge) step.

But LIGO's is precisely the kind of result which earns a Nobel.

R&K

[jimlup]

3. This is so cool!

As a Physics PhD, I wonder how they know the distance. Is there a "red shift" in the wave frequency? I also wonder how they know the masses of the two merging black holes. Apparently, the models of merging black holes must be sophisticated enough to gain all of this information from the frequency profile detected. Still, it is impressive science.

I teach High School physics now but I am proud to say that I helped two students find positions with LIGO for summer internships. It is excellent that they've now added VIRGO to the graviscope detection system.

[krispos42]

5. "...which means that about 3 solar masses were converted into gravitational-wave energy..."

Earth mass = 5.97237(10^24) kg
3x earth mass = 1.7917(10^25) kg

light speed = 3(10^8) m/s


Energy = mass x lightspeed²
Energy = 1.7917(10^25) x 9(10^16) = 1.613(10^42) joules
1,613,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules

That's... a lot of energy.

[Igel]

6. And if you want to help ...

https://einsteinathome.org/

Convert those unused flops into number crunching.

BOINC.

(Surprised there isn't a DU team for LIGO's distributed processing effort.)