University of Texas, Dallas | 2015 Feb 26
New research by a UT Dallas astrophysicist provides revelations about the most energetic event in the universe — the merging of two spinning, orbiting black holes into a much larger black hole.
The work by Dr. Michael Kesden ... provides for the first time solutions to decades-old equations that describe conditions as two black holes in a binary system orbit each other and spiral in toward a collision. ...
Kesden said the solutions should significantly impact not only the study of black holes, but also the search for gravitational waves in the cosmos. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that two massive objects orbiting in a binary system should move closer together as the system emits a type of radiation called gravitational waves. ...
While Einstein’s theories predict the existence of gravitational waves, they have not been directly detected. But the ability to “see” gravitational waves would open up a new window to view and study the universe. ...
Effective Potentials and Morphological Transitions for Binary Black Hole Spin Precession - Michael Kesden et al
- Physical Review Letters 114(08) 081103 (24 Feb 2015) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.081103
arXiv.org > gr-qc > arXiv:1411.0674 > 03 Nov 2014