4 ms·
Could a gravity whip of a large star around the a galactic central black hole make a big enough ripple?
by AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Could a gravity whip of a large star around the a galactic central black hole make a big enough ripple?
- ojnabieoot 6y agoI am not sure and am only a layperson on this (math grad school, physics undergrad) - conceptually you could think of a blue giant orbiting at 0.99c, but a) the orbit would be so large that the actual acceleration is fairly small, or b) the centripetal forces of a small, relativistic orbit would rip the star into pieces. In particular this would dramatically reduce the effective density of the accelerating mass. Having enough gravitational force to retain coherent structure while accelerating quickly enough to generate gravitational waves seems like a tough circle to square.
- simonh 6y agoThe material in stars is too spread out over a large volume, and stars move too slowly for these systems to detect them. Black hole collisions events last on the order of about 10 milliseconds and emit up to about 40% of their combined mass in gravitational energy. Nothing a star can do is fast or energetic enough to register at those scales.