Black hole merger rattles the cosmos

• Autores: Leah Crane
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3129, 2017, pág. 14
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • For the third time, the LIGO collaboration has detected gravitational waves emanating from a pair of merging black holes--yielding clues about how these duos form and building up the catalogue of them. LIGO detects waveforms, which are readouts of the ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by masses moving through it. The spins of merging black holes can warp those waveforms, which are mostly produced by their orbits and eventual collision. The first event yielded too little information to determine the direction of each black hole's spin. The second provided a bit more information, indicating that each black hole was probably spinning in the same direction as they were orbiting one another. But this third pair of black holes tilts towards Earth In a different way from the other two, according to Shoemaker, allowing LIGO to see more about how each one spins. This view has revealed that they aren't spinning in the same direction as their orbit. That means they're probably spinning indifferent directions or--far less likely--not spinning at all.