5 ms·
Yes, but it's only when the black holes get extremely close that they produce gravitational waves powerful enough for us to detect. You're correct that for man
by Jabbles 7y ago
Yes, but it's only when the black holes get extremely close that they produce gravitational waves powerful enough for us to detect.
You're correct that for many years (millenia?) the black holes have been orbiting each other much more slowly. We can't detect that though.
- foota 7y agoI wonder what the right time scale is here. My gut reaction is million of years?
- enkid 7y agoI believe it depends on the specifics of the merger, but my understanding is the reason black holes that orbit each other merge at all is because they bleed energy to gravitational waves. While they are at a reasonable distance, that's a very small amount of energy. I think some of these systems would be stable for billions of years.
- foota 7y agoBillions seemed too long to me, at that point you're talking about tenths of the lifetime of the universe!
- enkid 7y agoThat's the timescale the solar system is stable on.
- foota 7y agoAw, sorry. I think I mis-interpreted your comment. I was thinking more of how long the system has been falling apart for. It didn't make sense to me that that could have been for billions of years, since the movement involved would be so slow?