View Single Post
  #5  
Old 01-08-2022, 06:58 AM
alpal's Avatar
alpal
Registered User

alpal is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 3,612
I found an answer.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/startsw...amage-on-earth

By Ethan Siegel
Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges.


If we consider the first gravitational wave ever seen by LIGO — observed on September 14, 2015 but announced almost exactly 4 years ago today (on February 11, 2016) — it consisted of two black holes of 36 and 29 solar masses, respectively, that merged to produce a black hole of 62 solar masses. If you do the math, you'll notice that 36 + 29 does not equal 62. In order to balance that equation, the remaining three solar masses, corresponding to approximately 10% of the mass of the smaller black hole, needed to get converted into pure energy, via Einstein's E = mc2. That energy travels through space in the form of gravitational waves.

There is an enormous amount of energy emitted when two black holes of masses comparable to these merge; converting three solar masses worth of material into pure energy over a timescale of just 200 milliseconds is more energy than all the stars in the Universe give off, combined, over that same amount of time. All told, that first gravitational wave contained 5.3 × 1047 J of energy, with a peak emission, in the final milliseconds, of 3.6 × 1049 W.


There are some ways that a large-enough amplitude gravitational wave could meaningfully impart energy to Earth. Crystals packed in intricate lattices would heat up all throughout the Earth's interior, potentially cracking or shattering if the gravitational wave is strong enough. Earthquakes would ripple throughout our planet, cascading and overlapping, causing worldwide damage on our surface. Geysers would erupt spectacularly and irregularly, and it's possible that volcanic eruptions would be triggered. Even the oceans would produce global tsunamis, disproportionately affecting coastal areas.

But a black hole-black hole merger would need to take place within our Solar System for that to happen. From even the distance of the nearest star, gravitational waves would pass through us almost completely unnoticed. Although these ripples in spacetime carry more energy than any other cataclysmic event, the interactions are so weak that they barely affect us.
Reply With Quote