Waves in spacetime formed by the acceleration of massive bodies. A passing wave causes spacetime to be stretched and squashed by a very small amount. Typically we can only detect the most energic gravitational events such as black hole mergers.
Questions tagged [gravitational-waves]
201 questions
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Sound of a black hole merger
If we were in an earthlike planet at 1AU from a black hole merger, would we be able to hear the spacetime strains as the black holes orbit around each other? How would it sound?
Ahmed Ameeri
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Frequency of gravitational wave detection
You may have heard in the news that the LIGO experiment recently detected a gravitational wave.
Though I'm not an astronomer, the paper is a good read and mostly accessible. The detection of the gravitational wave is one thing, but the black hole…
meduz
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Can gravitational waves transfer energy or momentum to baryonic matter
In essence I want to know if GW can affect the momentum of baryonic matter. I know that massive objects like planets, stars, galaxies, etc will not be "ripped apart" or even disturbed by even the most massive GW from a SMBH major merger. But what…
NotSoSN
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Why can we detect gravitational waves?
Now that LIGO has finally measured gravitational waves using a huge laser interferometer, to me, the question remains, why was it possible? As it is explained in many news articles, gravitational waves are similar to water waves or electromagnetic…
Keinstein
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Is gravitational wave frequency always equal to double the orbital frequency?
If the binary does not evolve into merger stage (i.e.: it is still a steady binary), does the gravitational wave frequency have to be 2*orbital frequency? Could the frequency be, for instance, 2/3*orbital frequency and steady, rather than a chirp?…
Chen
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What changes are being made to VIRGO and LIGO (if any)?
Gravitational wave detectors VIRGO and LIGO are currently down for some updates, slated to be completed sometime early next year (they hope). What exactly are they doing? I hadn't heard it was down again after the last set of updates awhile ago.…
Magic Octopus Urn
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Is there a Doppler shift of gravity waves?
Are gravity waves affected by distance/velocity, like light from distant objects is red-shifted? How could this be detected and what would be the effect on objects when the wave reached them?
Colin
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Expansion and Gravity
If space is undergoing accelerated expansion then regions of space are becoming inaccessible to us even at light speed. If gravity is bounded by light speed then inaccessible regions of space no longer contribute gravitational influence on us. If…
Joshua
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Gravitational waves: how can scientists derrive the sizes and spin and distance of two merging black holes?
After recording the ripples of passing gravity waves I would imagine that some high-power math would be required to derive information about the sizes, spin, and distance of the merging black holes. Is it possible to get some insight into how they…
Gowron
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How to compensate the effect of tectonic activity in devices like LIGO?
In late 2015, the LIGO project team announced the detection of gravitational waves. The detector is (very basically) a laser measuring the distance between two mirrors in vacuum, over a large-enough distance to detect very small changes.
The two…
Eric Platon
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Why is the detection of gravitational waves such a "Big" deal?
I'm a non-scientist. Today's announcement of LIGO's detection of GW waves has been heralded as "huge" –on the same level as the Higgs Boson detection. I realize this is the last remaining part of Einstein's theory of general relativity to be…
iMerchant
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Radiation pattern of a GW source
Accelerated masses produce gravitational waves. A binary star system in which two stars orbit a common center of mass emits gravitational waves. The greatest power is emitted in the plane perpendicular to the stars' orbit. Therefore the following…
9herbert9
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When a supernova emits gravitational waves do they have momentum and does the supernova recoil to conserve momentum?
In a perfectly symmetrical supernova explosion presumably the net recoil would be zero.But would there be a recoil due to the emission of gravitational waves in a more realistic asymmetrical explosion?
user50623
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Does matter absorb/scatter gravitational waves?
When photons pass through matter, they do tend to get absorbed by that matter to some degree depending on the properties of the photon and and the matter. Even the brightest light is at least somewhat obscured by matter in its way.
Similarly, while…
tuomas
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GW190521's Luminosity Distance is greater than the age of the universe - how?
According to this article about the gravitational wave observation, GW190521, the estimated luminosity distance is appx 5+/-2 Gigaparsecs, which is appx 16 billion light years +/- 6:
https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0165/P2000020/012/LS17910.pdf
While I…
Daniel Williams
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