{"id":17957,"date":"2019-08-29T01:04:15","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T17:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/a-double-whammy-of-gravitational-waves-sparks-a-burst-of-black-hole-speculation\/"},"modified":"2019-08-29T01:04:15","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T17:04:15","slug":"a-double-whammy-of-gravitational-waves-sparks-a-burst-of-black-hole-speculation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/a-double-whammy-of-gravitational-waves-sparks-a-burst-of-black-hole-speculation\/","title":{"rendered":"A double whammy of gravitational waves sparks a burst of black hole speculation"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_294015\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-294015\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-294015\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161204-blackholes-630x509.jpg\" alt=\"Black hole merger\" width=\"630\" height=\"509\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161204-blackholes-630x509.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161204-blackholes-768x620.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161204-blackholes-1240x1002.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161204-blackholes.jpg 1671w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-294015\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artwork shows the merger of two black holes, which gives off a burst of gravitational waves.&nbsp; (SXS Graphic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Two detections of gravitational waves, separated by a mere 21 minutes, set off a flurry of excitement among astronomers today.<\/p>\n<p>Was it a binary black-hole merger? A double observation of a single black-hole merger, created by gravitational lensing effects? A glitch affecting the analytical systems at the world\u2019s gravitational-wave detectors? Or merely a coincidence of cosmic proportions?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a genuine \u2018Uh, wait, what?\u2019 We\u2019ve never seen that before\u2026\u2026.\u2019 moment in gravitational wave astronomy,\u201d Robert Rutledge, a physicist at McGill University, tweeted today. \u201cIf you\u2019d like to see how double-checks and confirmations and conclusions occur \u2013 pay attention, in real time. Happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the hours ticked by, the most intriguing likelihood \u2013 that the ripples in spacetime were warped and refocused by a powerful gravitational field in accordance with general relativity \u2013 appeared to become much less likely.<\/p>\n<p>A closer look at the data for the events, known as S190828j and S190828l, suggested that they did not emanate from the same location on the sky, as was earlier thought.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sky localizations are similar, but distinct,\u201d Northwestern University Christopher Berry, a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, said in a follow-up tweet. He noted that \u201cyou might expect them to overlap for a gravitationally lensed signal, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the astronomers sound tentative about all this, it\u2019s because they\u2019re working on a daily basis to make sense of results that become public almost as soon as they\u2019re spit out by the twin detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, at Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La., and by the Virgo detector in Italy.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Why are there giant concrete tunnels in the desert?\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DjcS1kRkc6M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The quick turnaround helps facilitate follow-up observations in electromagnetic wavelengths, such as the telescope sightings that led to the first-ever detection of a neutron star collision in 2017. But they also fuel real-time speculation about black-hole bizarreness.<\/p>\n<p>For example, astronomers oohed and ahhed earlier this month over readings that hinted at the detection of a black hole in the process of gobbling up a neutron star. That was also an \u201cUh, wait, what?\u201d moment crying out for confirmation. The findings won\u2019t be officially published unless they survive the peer-review process.<\/p>\n<p>Yet another wave of speculation has arisen over the seeming detection of a collision involving a black hole with a mass up to 100 times heavier than our sun.<\/p>\n<p>Some physicists say black holes shouldn\u2019t exist in that mass range, due to the way stars of particular sizes blow up when they die. There should be \u201c<em>no<\/em> black holes, not even a few\u201d of that size, Quanta Magazine\u2019s Natalie Wolchover quotes Stan Woolsey, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, as saying.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut of course we know nature often finds a way,\u201d Woolsey added.<\/p>\n<p>Will LIGO and Virgo reveal new ways in which nature finds a way? Based on the Nobel-winning discoveries we\u2019ve already seen on the gravitational-wave front, that\u2019s virtually certain to be the case, whether or not those new ways happen to involve S190828j and S190828l.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artwork shows the merger of two black holes, which gives off a burst of gravitational waves.&nbsp; (SXS Graphic) Two detections of gravitational waves, separated by a mere 21 minutes, set off a flurry of excitement among astronomers today. Was it a binary black-hole merger? A double observation of a single black-hole merger, created by gravitational [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4568,1690,1975,1978],"class_list":["post-17957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-advanced-ligo","tag-astrophysics","tag-black-holes","tag-gravitational-waves"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}