5 ms·
Gravitational waves have a similar effect of sapping the kinetic energy of orbiting black holes. Instead of heating the black holes, the energy is emitted as gr
by gizmo686 2y ago
Gravitational waves have a similar effect of sapping the kinetic energy of orbiting black holes. Instead of heating the black holes, the energy is emitted as gravitational radiation. Having said that, now that we have actual observations of the gravitational radiation emmited from merging black holes, we can be pretty confident in our understanding of the magnitude of this energy loss. And that understanding is that it does not become significant until well into the last parsec.
- vlovich123 2y agoBut however insignificant it is, wouldn’t it always be there sapping angular momentum & over a long period of time drag any two objects closer and closer together? What would be the repulsive force counteracting this?
- Salgat 2y agoSo the question isn't how they merge, but how they do it so quickly.
- antognini 2y agoYes, dynamical friction can "quickly" (on the order of 100 Myr) bring the two black holes to a distance of ~1 pc to each other. Gravitational wave radiation can "quickly" cause a merger if they are within a bit less than ~0.1 pc of each other. But how they go from 1 to 0.1 pc on a timescale of ~100 Myr is unknown.
- ardel95 2y agoIt would be. Which is why any pair of orbiting bodies will eventually collide. It’s just that for black holes this effect is insignificant (a merger would take much longer than the age of the Universe) until they get close to each other, much closer than 1 parsec.
- Iwan-Zotow 2y agoIt was observed long time ago, Nobel 1993