Timeline for Could gravitational waves be matter waves?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 14, 2017 at 23:09 | comment | added | Zo the Relativist | If it helps, imagine an oppenheimer-snyder solution instead of a schwarzschild one -- you start with an ordinary dust stress-energy tensor, with no singularities in the initial spacelike slice. It collapeses to a solution that eventually is just a schwarzschild solution. You can start with two orbiting dustballs, that collapse to black holes, and then radiate out gravitational waves. so the OPs complaint remains. But it's no more of a complaint than asking where the matter goes when a muon decays to an electron, a neutrino and a photon. | |
| Dec 14, 2017 at 23:07 | comment | added | user107153 | If you are worried about mass being converted into energy you should be very worried by the Sun, which converts something like $4\times 10^9\,\mathrm{kg}$ of its mass to energy every second. | |
| Nov 24, 2017 at 12:49 | comment | added | R. Rankin | @AlfredCentauri If there is no source (nowhere with a nonvanishing stress energy tensor), then why does the solution (Scharzschild metric) contain a mass term? Granted (as stated above) the source may be a single point (singularity) the nature of which is not understood. | |
| Nov 22, 2017 at 13:49 | comment | added | Alfred Centauri | @R.Rankin, I don't follow, the Schwarzschild black hole is the static, vacuum solution for a spherically symmetric spacetime. | |
| Nov 22, 2017 at 4:23 | comment | added | R. Rankin | @AlfredCentauri I feel like I should throw out there that the Schwarzschild solution requires that the RHS of the Einstein field equations is nonzero, therefore there is a nonzero source term that is not spacetime curvature. Granted it might be a singularity the nature of which is not understood. Consider however that a spherically symmetric body the size of our galaxy with the density of seawater (roughly), would be contained within it's own Schwarzschild radius. That being said, gravitational waves are not matter waves. | |
| Jun 19, 2017 at 15:10 | answer | added | AGML | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jun 19, 2017 at 9:47 | comment | added | Sam Cottle | Since nobody knows they can't predict they're made of anything in particular except, as you say, pure spacetime curvature but I was talking about the actual black holes, not the models, for like the fiftieth time. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 23:23 | comment | added | Alfred Centauri | Sam, the numeric simulations of binary black home mergers, the ones produce the templates that are used to identify the inspiral and ringdown waveforms in order to gain information on the initial masses and final mass, what do those models presume black holes are made of? | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 22:42 | comment | added | Sam Cottle | Ok, but in real life there is, and yes a Schwarzschild black hole is a solution to the Einstein field equations but, going beyond theoretical physics, real black holes exist, they sometimes merge with one another, and they're made of something. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 22:33 | comment | added | Alfred Centauri | Sam, a Schwarzschild black hole is not formed by collapsing matter; as I wrote above, there is no matter anywhere, anywhen in the Schwarzschild black hole solution. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 22:27 | comment | added | Sam Cottle | In theory perhaps, but think about the reality, they're formed of collapsing stars so they must be made of some kind of matter (or energy, I don't know). | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 22:25 | comment | added | Alfred Centauri | Sam, a Schwarzschild black hole is 'made of' spacetime curvature. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 19:28 | comment | added | Sam Cottle | Thanks, but I don't think anyone actually knows what black holes are made of. | |
| Jun 17, 2017 at 23:06 | answer | added | J. Murray | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jun 17, 2017 at 23:01 | comment | added | Alfred Centauri | "I don't understand how matter can be converted into 'gravitational energy'." - I assume you're talking about the binary black hole merger where it is reported that the final black hole mass is 3 solar masses less than the sum of the two in-spiraling black hole masses? If so, keep in mind that black holes are not, AFAIK, matter so there was no matter converted into gravitational energy. It's complicated but, for example, there is no matter anywhere, anywhen in the Schwarzschild black hole solution. | |
| Jun 17, 2017 at 22:50 | answer | added | JamalS | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jun 17, 2017 at 22:32 | history | asked | Sam Cottle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |