Black hole week reaches its conclusion today (May 10), and there’s no better way to mark the occasion than with some “eggs-traordinary” black hole science.
Using gravitational wave measurements by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), based in the U.S., and the Virgo and KAGRA detectors, located in Italy and Japan, respectively, scientists have found that the orbits of some binary black holes could be egg-shaped and exhibit a curious wobble.
This research is more than a mere curiosity (and an “eggs-cuse” to crack some bad egg-related puns). The discovery of these oval-shaped orbits in binary black hole systems could help researchers determine how each of these systems was formed.
Related: Fall into a black hole in mind-bending NASA animation (video)
“We find that the majority of binary black holes are expected to be in what’s called ‘quasi-circular’ orbits. The ‘quasi’ just means that the separation of the black holes is decreasing over time due to the emission of gravitational waves,” study lead author Nihar Gupte, of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany and the University of Maryland, told Space.com.
“Our study shows that a few of the binary black holes observed could be in ‘eccentric’ orbits,” Gupte added. “This means that the black holes orbit in an oval or ‘egg’ shape.”
The team also discovered that the tip of that egg-shaped oval orbit could rotate as the black holes orbit each other, the researcher said.
“We also found that if you analyze these events using a non-eccentric model, you will
overestimate the masses of the black holes,” Gupte added.
What can we learn from egg-shaped black hole orbits
Gupte and his colleagues examined 57 binary black hole pairs detected via gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that were first predicted by Albert Einstein in his famous 1915 theory of general relativity.
General relativity suggests that objects with mass create a curvature in the very fabric of space and time, united as a four-dimensional entity called “space-time.” Gravity arises from this curvature, which gets more extreme as the masses of the objects increase. That’s why stars have more gravitational influence than planets, and galaxies have more gravitational influence than stars.
Einstein also predicted in this revolutionary theory of gravity…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Space…