3 ms·

Billions of light years? I thought the energy would be too faint, but given they found tens of mergers, it makes sense its actually billions, I don't suppose t

• AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I seem to recall 3 billion light-years as the estimated distance of one of the early mergers detected. Can't cite a source, though...
• mabbo 6y ago
  It really is billions of light years. Can you imagine the amount of energy released that we can detect these waves billions of light years away? It's mind blowing. In some of these mergers, two black holes combine but their total mass after merging is short by 1 to 5 solar masses. ALL of that mass was converted to energy to create the gravitational waves we picked up. Picture that- the entire sun converted to energy in the blink of an eye, times five.
  • raducu 6y ago
    I read some article that the distortions at 10.000km from the merger would be ~1mm, so you could feel them, but not be harmed by them. In contrast, if all that energy was released as EM waves, you'd be cooked from far, far away. Such peaceful are these gravitational waves.
    • jfengel 6y ago
      I'm not so sure that a 1mm distortion would be safe. It's happening at the level of space itself, so it would change the way parts of molecules will relate to each other. It passes fast, but potentially you could fall apart at the molecular level. I am not a physicist so I could be completely wrong about that. And I'm not sure if it matters since it's probably accompanied by photons and probably neutrinos in sufficient quantity to wipe you out at that distance. (Not from the merger itself, but from any matter in its halo.)