How do inspiraling black holes get closer?Does Earth emit Gravitational waves?Why are orbits around black holes stable?Typical rotation speeds for black holesProblem with black holes?Vibrating black holesWhat happens to the angular momentum of two merging black holes?Do only black holes emit gravitational waves?Could primordial black holes be detected in solar system?Dormant black holes vs feeding black holesWhat happens to the singularities of two black holes in the moment they merger?How do LIGO and VIRGO know that a gravitational wave has its origin in a neutron star or a black hole?

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How do inspiraling black holes get closer?


Does Earth emit Gravitational waves?Why are orbits around black holes stable?Typical rotation speeds for black holesProblem with black holes?Vibrating black holesWhat happens to the angular momentum of two merging black holes?Do only black holes emit gravitational waves?Could primordial black holes be detected in solar system?Dormant black holes vs feeding black holesWhat happens to the singularities of two black holes in the moment they merger?How do LIGO and VIRGO know that a gravitational wave has its origin in a neutron star or a black hole?













9












$begingroup$


In Newtonian mechanics, binaries are stable. We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun. What is different about the black holes and neutron stars that LIGO Virgo are detecting which makes them spiral inwards?










share|cite|improve this question









$endgroup$











  • $begingroup$
    Good question. I can't answer it for black holes because I don't know how a black hole is affected by gravity.
    $endgroup$
    – John Duffield
    May 2 at 18:22










  • $begingroup$
    Black holes can be driven inwards when they exchange momentum with gases and debris
    $endgroup$
    – Henricus V.
    2 days ago















9












$begingroup$


In Newtonian mechanics, binaries are stable. We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun. What is different about the black holes and neutron stars that LIGO Virgo are detecting which makes them spiral inwards?










share|cite|improve this question









$endgroup$











  • $begingroup$
    Good question. I can't answer it for black holes because I don't know how a black hole is affected by gravity.
    $endgroup$
    – John Duffield
    May 2 at 18:22










  • $begingroup$
    Black holes can be driven inwards when they exchange momentum with gases and debris
    $endgroup$
    – Henricus V.
    2 days ago













9












9








9


1



$begingroup$


In Newtonian mechanics, binaries are stable. We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun. What is different about the black holes and neutron stars that LIGO Virgo are detecting which makes them spiral inwards?










share|cite|improve this question









$endgroup$




In Newtonian mechanics, binaries are stable. We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun. What is different about the black holes and neutron stars that LIGO Virgo are detecting which makes them spiral inwards?







black-holes angular-momentum binary-stars






share|cite|improve this question













share|cite|improve this question











share|cite|improve this question




share|cite|improve this question










asked May 2 at 16:50









Display NameDisplay Name

496211




496211











  • $begingroup$
    Good question. I can't answer it for black holes because I don't know how a black hole is affected by gravity.
    $endgroup$
    – John Duffield
    May 2 at 18:22










  • $begingroup$
    Black holes can be driven inwards when they exchange momentum with gases and debris
    $endgroup$
    – Henricus V.
    2 days ago
















  • $begingroup$
    Good question. I can't answer it for black holes because I don't know how a black hole is affected by gravity.
    $endgroup$
    – John Duffield
    May 2 at 18:22










  • $begingroup$
    Black holes can be driven inwards when they exchange momentum with gases and debris
    $endgroup$
    – Henricus V.
    2 days ago















$begingroup$
Good question. I can't answer it for black holes because I don't know how a black hole is affected by gravity.
$endgroup$
– John Duffield
May 2 at 18:22




$begingroup$
Good question. I can't answer it for black holes because I don't know how a black hole is affected by gravity.
$endgroup$
– John Duffield
May 2 at 18:22












$begingroup$
Black holes can be driven inwards when they exchange momentum with gases and debris
$endgroup$
– Henricus V.
2 days ago




$begingroup$
Black holes can be driven inwards when they exchange momentum with gases and debris
$endgroup$
– Henricus V.
2 days ago










3 Answers
3






active

oldest

votes


















12












$begingroup$

Compact binaries radiate gravitational radiation, which carries away energy, leading to the in-spiral.



An example is the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, which has a period that changes according to the prediction of energy-loss via gravitational radiation. For this observation, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993:



https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1993/press-release/



Which says:




The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize Physics for 1993 jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr, both of Princeton University, New Jersey, USA for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation



Gravity investigated with a binary pulsar

The discovery rewarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was made in 1974 by Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr using the 300-m radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, West Indies. Taylor, then Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his research student Hulse were searching systematically for pulsars – a kind of rapidly rotating cosmic beacon with a mass somewhat greater than that of the sun and a radius of about ten kilometres. (A human being on the surface of a pulsar would weigh some hundred thousand million times more than on Earth.) The pulsar’s “beacon light” is often within the radio wave region.



The first pulsar was discovered in 1967 at the radioastronomy laboratory in Cambridge, England (Nobel Prize 1974 to Antony Hewish). What was new about the Hulse-Taylor pulsar was that, from the behaviour of the beacon signal, it could be deduced that it was accompanied by an approximately equally heavy companion at a distance corresponding to only a few times the distance of the moon from the earth. The behaviour of this astronomical system deviates greatly from what can be calculated for a pair of heavenly bodies using Newton’s theory. Here a new, revolutionary “space laboratory” has been obtained for testing Einstein’s general theory of relativity and alternative theories of gravity. So far, Einstein’s theory has passed the tests with flying colours. Of particular interest has been the possibility of verifying with great precision the theory’s prediction that the system should lose energy by emitting gravitational waves in about the same way that a system of moving electrical charges emits electromagnetic waves.



The significance of the discovery of the binary pulsar

The discovery of the first binary pulsar is primarily of great significance for astrophysics and gravitational physics. Gravity is the oldest known natural force, the one we are most aware of in daily life. At the same time it is in one sense the force that is hardest to study since it is so much weaker than the other three natural forces: the electromagnetic force and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. The development of technology and science since the second World War with rockets, satellites, space voyages, radioastronomy, radar technology and the precise measurement of time using atomic clocks has led to a renaissance of the study of this earliest-known natural force. The discovery of the binary pulsar represents an important milestone in this historical development.



Relativity theory and gravitational physics

According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity is caused by changes in the geometry of space and time: space-time curves near masses. Einstein presented his theory in 1915 and became a world celebrity when in 1919 the English astrophysicist Arthur Eddington announced that one of the predictions of the theory, the deflection of starlight passing near the surface of the sun – “the light is drawn towards the sun” – had been verified during solar eclipse expeditions. This deflection of light. together with a small general-relativity contribution to the perihelion motion of ercury (a slow rotation of Mercury’s elliptical orbit round the sun), was for several decades the only, partly rather uncertain, support for Einstein’s theory.



For a long time the theory of relativity was considered aesthetically very beautiful and satisfying, probably correct, but of little practical significance to physics except in applications in cosmology, the study of the origin, development and structure of the universe.



Attitudes to the general theory of relativity changed, however, during the 1960s when both experimental and theoretical developments made gravitational physics a topical part of physics. New opportunities for precise experiments, based on satellite and radar technology, opened up. In particular, the research of the Americans R. Dicke and I. Shapiro contributed to this. Dicke performed precision experiments in which the sun’s gravitational field on the earth was used for verifying what is termed the equivalence principle, the identity between gravitational and inertial mass – one of the basic principles of the general theory of relativity (and also of several alternative gravitation theories). Important contributions were also Shapiro’s theoretical prediction and experimental verification, using radar echoes from Mercury, of a new consequence of the general theory of relativity – a time-delay effect for electromagnetic signals passing through gravitational fields.



All these experiments, however, were confined to our solar system with its very weak gravitational fields and consequently small deviations, hard,to measure, from the Newtonian theory of gravity. Hence it was possible to test the general theory of relativity and other theories only in the first post-Newtonian approximation.



The discovery of the binary pulsar

Hulse’s and Taylor’s discovery in 1974 of the first binary pulsar, called PSR 1913 + 16 (PSR stands for pulsar, and 1913 + 16 specifies the pulsar’s position in the sky) thus brought about a revolution in the field. We have here two very small astronomical bodies, each with a radius of some ten kilometres but with a mass comparable with that of the sun, and at a short distance from each other, only several times the moon’s distance from the earth. Here the deviations from Newton’s gravitational physics are large. As an example may be mentioned that the periastron shift, the rotation of the elliptical orbit that the pulsar (according to Kepler’s first law from the beginning of the 17th century) follows in this system, is 4 degrees per year. The corresponding relativistic shift for the most favourable example in our solar system, the above-mentioned perihelion motion of Mercury, is 43 seconds of arc per century (this is less than a tenth of the very much larger contributions to the perihelion motion caused by perturbations from other planets, chiefly Venus and Jupiter). The difference in size between the shifts is partly due to the orbital speed in the binary pulsar, which is almost five times greater than Mercury’s, and partly due to the pulsar performing about 250 times more orbits a year than Mercury. The orbiting time of the binary pulsar is less than eight hours, which can be compared with the one month our moon takes to orbit the earth.



A very important property of the new pulsar is that its pulse period, the time between two beacon sweeps (0.05903 see) has proved to be extremely stable, as opposed to what applies to many other pulsars. The pulsar’s pulse period increases by less than 5% during 1 million years. This means that the pulsar can be used as a clock which for precision can compete with the best atomic clocks, This is a very useful feature when studying the characteristics of the system.



The very stable pulse period is in fact a mean of the pulse period observed on earth over the time of one orbit of the pulsar system. The observed period actually varies by several tens of microseconds, i.e. by an amount that is much greater than the variation in the mean value. This is a Doppler effect, and led to the conclusion that the observed pulsar moves in a periodic orbit, meaning that it must have a companion. As the pulsar approaches the earth, the pulses reach the earth more frequently; as it recedes they arrive less frequently. From the variation in pulse period, conclusions can be drawn about the pulsar’s speed in its orbit and other important features of the system.



Demonstration of gravitational waves

A very important observation was made when the system had been followed for some years. This followed theoretical predictions made shortly after the original discovery of the pulsar. It was found that the orbit period is declining: the two astronomical bodies are rotating faster and faster about each other in an increasingly tight orbit. The change is very small. It corresponds to a reduction of the orbit period by about 75 millionths of a second per year, but, through observation over sufficient time, it is nevertheless fully measurable. This change was presumed to occur because the system is emitting energy in the form of gravitational waves in accordance with what Einstein in 1916 predicted should happen to masses moving relatively to each other. According to the latest data, the theoretically calculated value from the relativity theory agrees to within about one half of a percent with the observed value. The first report of this effect was made by Taylor and co-workers at the end of 1978, four years after the discovery of the binary pulsar was reported.



The good agreement between the observed value and the theoretically calculated value of the orbital path can be seen as an indirect proof of the existence of gravitational waves. We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence. Many long-term projects have been started for making direct observations of gravitational waves impinging upon the earth. The radiation emitted by the binary pulsar is too weak to be observed on the earth with existing techniques. However, perhaps the violent perturbations of matter that take place when the two astronomical bodies in a binary star (or a binary pulsar) approach each other so closely that they fall into each other may give rise to gravitational waves that could be observed here. It is also hoped to be able to observe many other violent events in the universe. Gravitational wave astronomy is the latest, as yet unproven, branch of observational astronomy, where neutrino astronomy is the most direct predecessor. Gravitational wave astronomy would then be the first observational technique for which the basic principle was first tested in an astrophysical context. All earlier observational techniques in astronomy have been based on physical phenomena which first became known in a terrestrial connection.



The radio waves from a pulsar are emitted in two bunches which sweep across space at the same rate as the pulsar rotates (upper figure). From a binary pulsar, gravitational waves are also emitted (lower figure).







share|cite|improve this answer











$endgroup$








  • 5




    $begingroup$
    In addition to carrying away energy, gravitational waves carry away angular momentum and linear momentum. The loss of angular momentum causes the binary orbit to lose its eccentricity and become circular. The loss of linear momentum causes the system to recoil, but this is usually not a large effect.
    $endgroup$
    – G. Smith
    May 2 at 20:22










  • $begingroup$
    "We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence" - oh, hai
    $endgroup$
    – Yakk
    2 days ago











  • $begingroup$
    @G.Smith I would think: Since the circular orbit maximizes angular momentum, the emission of radiation would carry away "opposite" angular momentum, leading to spin up of the system...?
    $endgroup$
    – JEB
    2 days ago


















8












$begingroup$

Others got you covered about the nature of gravitational waves, so I'll just in case explicitly stress the logical problem of your question:




We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun.




Your (implied) assumption is wrong. Earth does lose energy; just not measurably much compared to the magnitude of binary black holes. (Afaik Earth loses more energy to tidal drag than gravitational waves.) Angular momentum is of course conserved in the whole system, but the loss mechanisms ought to be somewhat complicated as well.






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New contributor




JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.






$endgroup$








  • 1




    $begingroup$
    Related: Does the Earth emit gravitational waves? Includes an estimate of how long the Earth will take to spiral in to the Sun via energy loss to gravitational waves. The timescale is sufficiently long that I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
    $endgroup$
    – Michael Seifert
    May 2 at 20:28










  • $begingroup$
    Do black holes experience tidal drag?
    $endgroup$
    – Display Name
    May 2 at 20:57






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    @Michael I dare say that the radiation pressure of sunlight might more than compensate for the 196 watts of gravitational radiation you calculate in that answer. ;)
    $endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    May 2 at 23:06










  • $begingroup$
    @PM2Ring: radiation pressure gives radial force (on average) and does not compensate lost angular momentum.
    $endgroup$
    – A.V.S.
    2 days ago










  • $begingroup$
    @A.V.S. Good point.
    $endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    2 days ago


















0












$begingroup$

Except gravitational waves, there is also no stable circular orbit near black hole. In schwarschild black hole the limit is 3 times the schwarszchild radius.



Thats because in GR gravitation is usually stronger than in Newton (usually called - the energy of gravitational field also creates gravity, but i dont think this statement actually stands on solid ground. I never saw any definition of "energy of gravitational field" in GR and i think there cannot be any due to the equivalence principle. But dont take my word for it.)






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    3 Answers
    3






    active

    oldest

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    3 Answers
    3






    active

    oldest

    votes









    active

    oldest

    votes






    active

    oldest

    votes









    12












    $begingroup$

    Compact binaries radiate gravitational radiation, which carries away energy, leading to the in-spiral.



    An example is the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, which has a period that changes according to the prediction of energy-loss via gravitational radiation. For this observation, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993:



    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1993/press-release/



    Which says:




    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize Physics for 1993 jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr, both of Princeton University, New Jersey, USA for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation



    Gravity investigated with a binary pulsar

    The discovery rewarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was made in 1974 by Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr using the 300-m radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, West Indies. Taylor, then Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his research student Hulse were searching systematically for pulsars – a kind of rapidly rotating cosmic beacon with a mass somewhat greater than that of the sun and a radius of about ten kilometres. (A human being on the surface of a pulsar would weigh some hundred thousand million times more than on Earth.) The pulsar’s “beacon light” is often within the radio wave region.



    The first pulsar was discovered in 1967 at the radioastronomy laboratory in Cambridge, England (Nobel Prize 1974 to Antony Hewish). What was new about the Hulse-Taylor pulsar was that, from the behaviour of the beacon signal, it could be deduced that it was accompanied by an approximately equally heavy companion at a distance corresponding to only a few times the distance of the moon from the earth. The behaviour of this astronomical system deviates greatly from what can be calculated for a pair of heavenly bodies using Newton’s theory. Here a new, revolutionary “space laboratory” has been obtained for testing Einstein’s general theory of relativity and alternative theories of gravity. So far, Einstein’s theory has passed the tests with flying colours. Of particular interest has been the possibility of verifying with great precision the theory’s prediction that the system should lose energy by emitting gravitational waves in about the same way that a system of moving electrical charges emits electromagnetic waves.



    The significance of the discovery of the binary pulsar

    The discovery of the first binary pulsar is primarily of great significance for astrophysics and gravitational physics. Gravity is the oldest known natural force, the one we are most aware of in daily life. At the same time it is in one sense the force that is hardest to study since it is so much weaker than the other three natural forces: the electromagnetic force and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. The development of technology and science since the second World War with rockets, satellites, space voyages, radioastronomy, radar technology and the precise measurement of time using atomic clocks has led to a renaissance of the study of this earliest-known natural force. The discovery of the binary pulsar represents an important milestone in this historical development.



    Relativity theory and gravitational physics

    According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity is caused by changes in the geometry of space and time: space-time curves near masses. Einstein presented his theory in 1915 and became a world celebrity when in 1919 the English astrophysicist Arthur Eddington announced that one of the predictions of the theory, the deflection of starlight passing near the surface of the sun – “the light is drawn towards the sun” – had been verified during solar eclipse expeditions. This deflection of light. together with a small general-relativity contribution to the perihelion motion of ercury (a slow rotation of Mercury’s elliptical orbit round the sun), was for several decades the only, partly rather uncertain, support for Einstein’s theory.



    For a long time the theory of relativity was considered aesthetically very beautiful and satisfying, probably correct, but of little practical significance to physics except in applications in cosmology, the study of the origin, development and structure of the universe.



    Attitudes to the general theory of relativity changed, however, during the 1960s when both experimental and theoretical developments made gravitational physics a topical part of physics. New opportunities for precise experiments, based on satellite and radar technology, opened up. In particular, the research of the Americans R. Dicke and I. Shapiro contributed to this. Dicke performed precision experiments in which the sun’s gravitational field on the earth was used for verifying what is termed the equivalence principle, the identity between gravitational and inertial mass – one of the basic principles of the general theory of relativity (and also of several alternative gravitation theories). Important contributions were also Shapiro’s theoretical prediction and experimental verification, using radar echoes from Mercury, of a new consequence of the general theory of relativity – a time-delay effect for electromagnetic signals passing through gravitational fields.



    All these experiments, however, were confined to our solar system with its very weak gravitational fields and consequently small deviations, hard,to measure, from the Newtonian theory of gravity. Hence it was possible to test the general theory of relativity and other theories only in the first post-Newtonian approximation.



    The discovery of the binary pulsar

    Hulse’s and Taylor’s discovery in 1974 of the first binary pulsar, called PSR 1913 + 16 (PSR stands for pulsar, and 1913 + 16 specifies the pulsar’s position in the sky) thus brought about a revolution in the field. We have here two very small astronomical bodies, each with a radius of some ten kilometres but with a mass comparable with that of the sun, and at a short distance from each other, only several times the moon’s distance from the earth. Here the deviations from Newton’s gravitational physics are large. As an example may be mentioned that the periastron shift, the rotation of the elliptical orbit that the pulsar (according to Kepler’s first law from the beginning of the 17th century) follows in this system, is 4 degrees per year. The corresponding relativistic shift for the most favourable example in our solar system, the above-mentioned perihelion motion of Mercury, is 43 seconds of arc per century (this is less than a tenth of the very much larger contributions to the perihelion motion caused by perturbations from other planets, chiefly Venus and Jupiter). The difference in size between the shifts is partly due to the orbital speed in the binary pulsar, which is almost five times greater than Mercury’s, and partly due to the pulsar performing about 250 times more orbits a year than Mercury. The orbiting time of the binary pulsar is less than eight hours, which can be compared with the one month our moon takes to orbit the earth.



    A very important property of the new pulsar is that its pulse period, the time between two beacon sweeps (0.05903 see) has proved to be extremely stable, as opposed to what applies to many other pulsars. The pulsar’s pulse period increases by less than 5% during 1 million years. This means that the pulsar can be used as a clock which for precision can compete with the best atomic clocks, This is a very useful feature when studying the characteristics of the system.



    The very stable pulse period is in fact a mean of the pulse period observed on earth over the time of one orbit of the pulsar system. The observed period actually varies by several tens of microseconds, i.e. by an amount that is much greater than the variation in the mean value. This is a Doppler effect, and led to the conclusion that the observed pulsar moves in a periodic orbit, meaning that it must have a companion. As the pulsar approaches the earth, the pulses reach the earth more frequently; as it recedes they arrive less frequently. From the variation in pulse period, conclusions can be drawn about the pulsar’s speed in its orbit and other important features of the system.



    Demonstration of gravitational waves

    A very important observation was made when the system had been followed for some years. This followed theoretical predictions made shortly after the original discovery of the pulsar. It was found that the orbit period is declining: the two astronomical bodies are rotating faster and faster about each other in an increasingly tight orbit. The change is very small. It corresponds to a reduction of the orbit period by about 75 millionths of a second per year, but, through observation over sufficient time, it is nevertheless fully measurable. This change was presumed to occur because the system is emitting energy in the form of gravitational waves in accordance with what Einstein in 1916 predicted should happen to masses moving relatively to each other. According to the latest data, the theoretically calculated value from the relativity theory agrees to within about one half of a percent with the observed value. The first report of this effect was made by Taylor and co-workers at the end of 1978, four years after the discovery of the binary pulsar was reported.



    The good agreement between the observed value and the theoretically calculated value of the orbital path can be seen as an indirect proof of the existence of gravitational waves. We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence. Many long-term projects have been started for making direct observations of gravitational waves impinging upon the earth. The radiation emitted by the binary pulsar is too weak to be observed on the earth with existing techniques. However, perhaps the violent perturbations of matter that take place when the two astronomical bodies in a binary star (or a binary pulsar) approach each other so closely that they fall into each other may give rise to gravitational waves that could be observed here. It is also hoped to be able to observe many other violent events in the universe. Gravitational wave astronomy is the latest, as yet unproven, branch of observational astronomy, where neutrino astronomy is the most direct predecessor. Gravitational wave astronomy would then be the first observational technique for which the basic principle was first tested in an astrophysical context. All earlier observational techniques in astronomy have been based on physical phenomena which first became known in a terrestrial connection.



    The radio waves from a pulsar are emitted in two bunches which sweep across space at the same rate as the pulsar rotates (upper figure). From a binary pulsar, gravitational waves are also emitted (lower figure).







    share|cite|improve this answer











    $endgroup$








    • 5




      $begingroup$
      In addition to carrying away energy, gravitational waves carry away angular momentum and linear momentum. The loss of angular momentum causes the binary orbit to lose its eccentricity and become circular. The loss of linear momentum causes the system to recoil, but this is usually not a large effect.
      $endgroup$
      – G. Smith
      May 2 at 20:22










    • $begingroup$
      "We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence" - oh, hai
      $endgroup$
      – Yakk
      2 days ago











    • $begingroup$
      @G.Smith I would think: Since the circular orbit maximizes angular momentum, the emission of radiation would carry away "opposite" angular momentum, leading to spin up of the system...?
      $endgroup$
      – JEB
      2 days ago















    12












    $begingroup$

    Compact binaries radiate gravitational radiation, which carries away energy, leading to the in-spiral.



    An example is the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, which has a period that changes according to the prediction of energy-loss via gravitational radiation. For this observation, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993:



    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1993/press-release/



    Which says:




    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize Physics for 1993 jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr, both of Princeton University, New Jersey, USA for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation



    Gravity investigated with a binary pulsar

    The discovery rewarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was made in 1974 by Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr using the 300-m radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, West Indies. Taylor, then Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his research student Hulse were searching systematically for pulsars – a kind of rapidly rotating cosmic beacon with a mass somewhat greater than that of the sun and a radius of about ten kilometres. (A human being on the surface of a pulsar would weigh some hundred thousand million times more than on Earth.) The pulsar’s “beacon light” is often within the radio wave region.



    The first pulsar was discovered in 1967 at the radioastronomy laboratory in Cambridge, England (Nobel Prize 1974 to Antony Hewish). What was new about the Hulse-Taylor pulsar was that, from the behaviour of the beacon signal, it could be deduced that it was accompanied by an approximately equally heavy companion at a distance corresponding to only a few times the distance of the moon from the earth. The behaviour of this astronomical system deviates greatly from what can be calculated for a pair of heavenly bodies using Newton’s theory. Here a new, revolutionary “space laboratory” has been obtained for testing Einstein’s general theory of relativity and alternative theories of gravity. So far, Einstein’s theory has passed the tests with flying colours. Of particular interest has been the possibility of verifying with great precision the theory’s prediction that the system should lose energy by emitting gravitational waves in about the same way that a system of moving electrical charges emits electromagnetic waves.



    The significance of the discovery of the binary pulsar

    The discovery of the first binary pulsar is primarily of great significance for astrophysics and gravitational physics. Gravity is the oldest known natural force, the one we are most aware of in daily life. At the same time it is in one sense the force that is hardest to study since it is so much weaker than the other three natural forces: the electromagnetic force and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. The development of technology and science since the second World War with rockets, satellites, space voyages, radioastronomy, radar technology and the precise measurement of time using atomic clocks has led to a renaissance of the study of this earliest-known natural force. The discovery of the binary pulsar represents an important milestone in this historical development.



    Relativity theory and gravitational physics

    According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity is caused by changes in the geometry of space and time: space-time curves near masses. Einstein presented his theory in 1915 and became a world celebrity when in 1919 the English astrophysicist Arthur Eddington announced that one of the predictions of the theory, the deflection of starlight passing near the surface of the sun – “the light is drawn towards the sun” – had been verified during solar eclipse expeditions. This deflection of light. together with a small general-relativity contribution to the perihelion motion of ercury (a slow rotation of Mercury’s elliptical orbit round the sun), was for several decades the only, partly rather uncertain, support for Einstein’s theory.



    For a long time the theory of relativity was considered aesthetically very beautiful and satisfying, probably correct, but of little practical significance to physics except in applications in cosmology, the study of the origin, development and structure of the universe.



    Attitudes to the general theory of relativity changed, however, during the 1960s when both experimental and theoretical developments made gravitational physics a topical part of physics. New opportunities for precise experiments, based on satellite and radar technology, opened up. In particular, the research of the Americans R. Dicke and I. Shapiro contributed to this. Dicke performed precision experiments in which the sun’s gravitational field on the earth was used for verifying what is termed the equivalence principle, the identity between gravitational and inertial mass – one of the basic principles of the general theory of relativity (and also of several alternative gravitation theories). Important contributions were also Shapiro’s theoretical prediction and experimental verification, using radar echoes from Mercury, of a new consequence of the general theory of relativity – a time-delay effect for electromagnetic signals passing through gravitational fields.



    All these experiments, however, were confined to our solar system with its very weak gravitational fields and consequently small deviations, hard,to measure, from the Newtonian theory of gravity. Hence it was possible to test the general theory of relativity and other theories only in the first post-Newtonian approximation.



    The discovery of the binary pulsar

    Hulse’s and Taylor’s discovery in 1974 of the first binary pulsar, called PSR 1913 + 16 (PSR stands for pulsar, and 1913 + 16 specifies the pulsar’s position in the sky) thus brought about a revolution in the field. We have here two very small astronomical bodies, each with a radius of some ten kilometres but with a mass comparable with that of the sun, and at a short distance from each other, only several times the moon’s distance from the earth. Here the deviations from Newton’s gravitational physics are large. As an example may be mentioned that the periastron shift, the rotation of the elliptical orbit that the pulsar (according to Kepler’s first law from the beginning of the 17th century) follows in this system, is 4 degrees per year. The corresponding relativistic shift for the most favourable example in our solar system, the above-mentioned perihelion motion of Mercury, is 43 seconds of arc per century (this is less than a tenth of the very much larger contributions to the perihelion motion caused by perturbations from other planets, chiefly Venus and Jupiter). The difference in size between the shifts is partly due to the orbital speed in the binary pulsar, which is almost five times greater than Mercury’s, and partly due to the pulsar performing about 250 times more orbits a year than Mercury. The orbiting time of the binary pulsar is less than eight hours, which can be compared with the one month our moon takes to orbit the earth.



    A very important property of the new pulsar is that its pulse period, the time between two beacon sweeps (0.05903 see) has proved to be extremely stable, as opposed to what applies to many other pulsars. The pulsar’s pulse period increases by less than 5% during 1 million years. This means that the pulsar can be used as a clock which for precision can compete with the best atomic clocks, This is a very useful feature when studying the characteristics of the system.



    The very stable pulse period is in fact a mean of the pulse period observed on earth over the time of one orbit of the pulsar system. The observed period actually varies by several tens of microseconds, i.e. by an amount that is much greater than the variation in the mean value. This is a Doppler effect, and led to the conclusion that the observed pulsar moves in a periodic orbit, meaning that it must have a companion. As the pulsar approaches the earth, the pulses reach the earth more frequently; as it recedes they arrive less frequently. From the variation in pulse period, conclusions can be drawn about the pulsar’s speed in its orbit and other important features of the system.



    Demonstration of gravitational waves

    A very important observation was made when the system had been followed for some years. This followed theoretical predictions made shortly after the original discovery of the pulsar. It was found that the orbit period is declining: the two astronomical bodies are rotating faster and faster about each other in an increasingly tight orbit. The change is very small. It corresponds to a reduction of the orbit period by about 75 millionths of a second per year, but, through observation over sufficient time, it is nevertheless fully measurable. This change was presumed to occur because the system is emitting energy in the form of gravitational waves in accordance with what Einstein in 1916 predicted should happen to masses moving relatively to each other. According to the latest data, the theoretically calculated value from the relativity theory agrees to within about one half of a percent with the observed value. The first report of this effect was made by Taylor and co-workers at the end of 1978, four years after the discovery of the binary pulsar was reported.



    The good agreement between the observed value and the theoretically calculated value of the orbital path can be seen as an indirect proof of the existence of gravitational waves. We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence. Many long-term projects have been started for making direct observations of gravitational waves impinging upon the earth. The radiation emitted by the binary pulsar is too weak to be observed on the earth with existing techniques. However, perhaps the violent perturbations of matter that take place when the two astronomical bodies in a binary star (or a binary pulsar) approach each other so closely that they fall into each other may give rise to gravitational waves that could be observed here. It is also hoped to be able to observe many other violent events in the universe. Gravitational wave astronomy is the latest, as yet unproven, branch of observational astronomy, where neutrino astronomy is the most direct predecessor. Gravitational wave astronomy would then be the first observational technique for which the basic principle was first tested in an astrophysical context. All earlier observational techniques in astronomy have been based on physical phenomena which first became known in a terrestrial connection.



    The radio waves from a pulsar are emitted in two bunches which sweep across space at the same rate as the pulsar rotates (upper figure). From a binary pulsar, gravitational waves are also emitted (lower figure).







    share|cite|improve this answer











    $endgroup$








    • 5




      $begingroup$
      In addition to carrying away energy, gravitational waves carry away angular momentum and linear momentum. The loss of angular momentum causes the binary orbit to lose its eccentricity and become circular. The loss of linear momentum causes the system to recoil, but this is usually not a large effect.
      $endgroup$
      – G. Smith
      May 2 at 20:22










    • $begingroup$
      "We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence" - oh, hai
      $endgroup$
      – Yakk
      2 days ago











    • $begingroup$
      @G.Smith I would think: Since the circular orbit maximizes angular momentum, the emission of radiation would carry away "opposite" angular momentum, leading to spin up of the system...?
      $endgroup$
      – JEB
      2 days ago













    12












    12








    12





    $begingroup$

    Compact binaries radiate gravitational radiation, which carries away energy, leading to the in-spiral.



    An example is the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, which has a period that changes according to the prediction of energy-loss via gravitational radiation. For this observation, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993:



    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1993/press-release/



    Which says:




    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize Physics for 1993 jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr, both of Princeton University, New Jersey, USA for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation



    Gravity investigated with a binary pulsar

    The discovery rewarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was made in 1974 by Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr using the 300-m radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, West Indies. Taylor, then Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his research student Hulse were searching systematically for pulsars – a kind of rapidly rotating cosmic beacon with a mass somewhat greater than that of the sun and a radius of about ten kilometres. (A human being on the surface of a pulsar would weigh some hundred thousand million times more than on Earth.) The pulsar’s “beacon light” is often within the radio wave region.



    The first pulsar was discovered in 1967 at the radioastronomy laboratory in Cambridge, England (Nobel Prize 1974 to Antony Hewish). What was new about the Hulse-Taylor pulsar was that, from the behaviour of the beacon signal, it could be deduced that it was accompanied by an approximately equally heavy companion at a distance corresponding to only a few times the distance of the moon from the earth. The behaviour of this astronomical system deviates greatly from what can be calculated for a pair of heavenly bodies using Newton’s theory. Here a new, revolutionary “space laboratory” has been obtained for testing Einstein’s general theory of relativity and alternative theories of gravity. So far, Einstein’s theory has passed the tests with flying colours. Of particular interest has been the possibility of verifying with great precision the theory’s prediction that the system should lose energy by emitting gravitational waves in about the same way that a system of moving electrical charges emits electromagnetic waves.



    The significance of the discovery of the binary pulsar

    The discovery of the first binary pulsar is primarily of great significance for astrophysics and gravitational physics. Gravity is the oldest known natural force, the one we are most aware of in daily life. At the same time it is in one sense the force that is hardest to study since it is so much weaker than the other three natural forces: the electromagnetic force and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. The development of technology and science since the second World War with rockets, satellites, space voyages, radioastronomy, radar technology and the precise measurement of time using atomic clocks has led to a renaissance of the study of this earliest-known natural force. The discovery of the binary pulsar represents an important milestone in this historical development.



    Relativity theory and gravitational physics

    According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity is caused by changes in the geometry of space and time: space-time curves near masses. Einstein presented his theory in 1915 and became a world celebrity when in 1919 the English astrophysicist Arthur Eddington announced that one of the predictions of the theory, the deflection of starlight passing near the surface of the sun – “the light is drawn towards the sun” – had been verified during solar eclipse expeditions. This deflection of light. together with a small general-relativity contribution to the perihelion motion of ercury (a slow rotation of Mercury’s elliptical orbit round the sun), was for several decades the only, partly rather uncertain, support for Einstein’s theory.



    For a long time the theory of relativity was considered aesthetically very beautiful and satisfying, probably correct, but of little practical significance to physics except in applications in cosmology, the study of the origin, development and structure of the universe.



    Attitudes to the general theory of relativity changed, however, during the 1960s when both experimental and theoretical developments made gravitational physics a topical part of physics. New opportunities for precise experiments, based on satellite and radar technology, opened up. In particular, the research of the Americans R. Dicke and I. Shapiro contributed to this. Dicke performed precision experiments in which the sun’s gravitational field on the earth was used for verifying what is termed the equivalence principle, the identity between gravitational and inertial mass – one of the basic principles of the general theory of relativity (and also of several alternative gravitation theories). Important contributions were also Shapiro’s theoretical prediction and experimental verification, using radar echoes from Mercury, of a new consequence of the general theory of relativity – a time-delay effect for electromagnetic signals passing through gravitational fields.



    All these experiments, however, were confined to our solar system with its very weak gravitational fields and consequently small deviations, hard,to measure, from the Newtonian theory of gravity. Hence it was possible to test the general theory of relativity and other theories only in the first post-Newtonian approximation.



    The discovery of the binary pulsar

    Hulse’s and Taylor’s discovery in 1974 of the first binary pulsar, called PSR 1913 + 16 (PSR stands for pulsar, and 1913 + 16 specifies the pulsar’s position in the sky) thus brought about a revolution in the field. We have here two very small astronomical bodies, each with a radius of some ten kilometres but with a mass comparable with that of the sun, and at a short distance from each other, only several times the moon’s distance from the earth. Here the deviations from Newton’s gravitational physics are large. As an example may be mentioned that the periastron shift, the rotation of the elliptical orbit that the pulsar (according to Kepler’s first law from the beginning of the 17th century) follows in this system, is 4 degrees per year. The corresponding relativistic shift for the most favourable example in our solar system, the above-mentioned perihelion motion of Mercury, is 43 seconds of arc per century (this is less than a tenth of the very much larger contributions to the perihelion motion caused by perturbations from other planets, chiefly Venus and Jupiter). The difference in size between the shifts is partly due to the orbital speed in the binary pulsar, which is almost five times greater than Mercury’s, and partly due to the pulsar performing about 250 times more orbits a year than Mercury. The orbiting time of the binary pulsar is less than eight hours, which can be compared with the one month our moon takes to orbit the earth.



    A very important property of the new pulsar is that its pulse period, the time between two beacon sweeps (0.05903 see) has proved to be extremely stable, as opposed to what applies to many other pulsars. The pulsar’s pulse period increases by less than 5% during 1 million years. This means that the pulsar can be used as a clock which for precision can compete with the best atomic clocks, This is a very useful feature when studying the characteristics of the system.



    The very stable pulse period is in fact a mean of the pulse period observed on earth over the time of one orbit of the pulsar system. The observed period actually varies by several tens of microseconds, i.e. by an amount that is much greater than the variation in the mean value. This is a Doppler effect, and led to the conclusion that the observed pulsar moves in a periodic orbit, meaning that it must have a companion. As the pulsar approaches the earth, the pulses reach the earth more frequently; as it recedes they arrive less frequently. From the variation in pulse period, conclusions can be drawn about the pulsar’s speed in its orbit and other important features of the system.



    Demonstration of gravitational waves

    A very important observation was made when the system had been followed for some years. This followed theoretical predictions made shortly after the original discovery of the pulsar. It was found that the orbit period is declining: the two astronomical bodies are rotating faster and faster about each other in an increasingly tight orbit. The change is very small. It corresponds to a reduction of the orbit period by about 75 millionths of a second per year, but, through observation over sufficient time, it is nevertheless fully measurable. This change was presumed to occur because the system is emitting energy in the form of gravitational waves in accordance with what Einstein in 1916 predicted should happen to masses moving relatively to each other. According to the latest data, the theoretically calculated value from the relativity theory agrees to within about one half of a percent with the observed value. The first report of this effect was made by Taylor and co-workers at the end of 1978, four years after the discovery of the binary pulsar was reported.



    The good agreement between the observed value and the theoretically calculated value of the orbital path can be seen as an indirect proof of the existence of gravitational waves. We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence. Many long-term projects have been started for making direct observations of gravitational waves impinging upon the earth. The radiation emitted by the binary pulsar is too weak to be observed on the earth with existing techniques. However, perhaps the violent perturbations of matter that take place when the two astronomical bodies in a binary star (or a binary pulsar) approach each other so closely that they fall into each other may give rise to gravitational waves that could be observed here. It is also hoped to be able to observe many other violent events in the universe. Gravitational wave astronomy is the latest, as yet unproven, branch of observational astronomy, where neutrino astronomy is the most direct predecessor. Gravitational wave astronomy would then be the first observational technique for which the basic principle was first tested in an astrophysical context. All earlier observational techniques in astronomy have been based on physical phenomena which first became known in a terrestrial connection.



    The radio waves from a pulsar are emitted in two bunches which sweep across space at the same rate as the pulsar rotates (upper figure). From a binary pulsar, gravitational waves are also emitted (lower figure).







    share|cite|improve this answer











    $endgroup$



    Compact binaries radiate gravitational radiation, which carries away energy, leading to the in-spiral.



    An example is the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, which has a period that changes according to the prediction of energy-loss via gravitational radiation. For this observation, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993:



    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1993/press-release/



    Which says:




    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize Physics for 1993 jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr, both of Princeton University, New Jersey, USA for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation



    Gravity investigated with a binary pulsar

    The discovery rewarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was made in 1974 by Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr using the 300-m radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, West Indies. Taylor, then Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his research student Hulse were searching systematically for pulsars – a kind of rapidly rotating cosmic beacon with a mass somewhat greater than that of the sun and a radius of about ten kilometres. (A human being on the surface of a pulsar would weigh some hundred thousand million times more than on Earth.) The pulsar’s “beacon light” is often within the radio wave region.



    The first pulsar was discovered in 1967 at the radioastronomy laboratory in Cambridge, England (Nobel Prize 1974 to Antony Hewish). What was new about the Hulse-Taylor pulsar was that, from the behaviour of the beacon signal, it could be deduced that it was accompanied by an approximately equally heavy companion at a distance corresponding to only a few times the distance of the moon from the earth. The behaviour of this astronomical system deviates greatly from what can be calculated for a pair of heavenly bodies using Newton’s theory. Here a new, revolutionary “space laboratory” has been obtained for testing Einstein’s general theory of relativity and alternative theories of gravity. So far, Einstein’s theory has passed the tests with flying colours. Of particular interest has been the possibility of verifying with great precision the theory’s prediction that the system should lose energy by emitting gravitational waves in about the same way that a system of moving electrical charges emits electromagnetic waves.



    The significance of the discovery of the binary pulsar

    The discovery of the first binary pulsar is primarily of great significance for astrophysics and gravitational physics. Gravity is the oldest known natural force, the one we are most aware of in daily life. At the same time it is in one sense the force that is hardest to study since it is so much weaker than the other three natural forces: the electromagnetic force and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. The development of technology and science since the second World War with rockets, satellites, space voyages, radioastronomy, radar technology and the precise measurement of time using atomic clocks has led to a renaissance of the study of this earliest-known natural force. The discovery of the binary pulsar represents an important milestone in this historical development.



    Relativity theory and gravitational physics

    According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity is caused by changes in the geometry of space and time: space-time curves near masses. Einstein presented his theory in 1915 and became a world celebrity when in 1919 the English astrophysicist Arthur Eddington announced that one of the predictions of the theory, the deflection of starlight passing near the surface of the sun – “the light is drawn towards the sun” – had been verified during solar eclipse expeditions. This deflection of light. together with a small general-relativity contribution to the perihelion motion of ercury (a slow rotation of Mercury’s elliptical orbit round the sun), was for several decades the only, partly rather uncertain, support for Einstein’s theory.



    For a long time the theory of relativity was considered aesthetically very beautiful and satisfying, probably correct, but of little practical significance to physics except in applications in cosmology, the study of the origin, development and structure of the universe.



    Attitudes to the general theory of relativity changed, however, during the 1960s when both experimental and theoretical developments made gravitational physics a topical part of physics. New opportunities for precise experiments, based on satellite and radar technology, opened up. In particular, the research of the Americans R. Dicke and I. Shapiro contributed to this. Dicke performed precision experiments in which the sun’s gravitational field on the earth was used for verifying what is termed the equivalence principle, the identity between gravitational and inertial mass – one of the basic principles of the general theory of relativity (and also of several alternative gravitation theories). Important contributions were also Shapiro’s theoretical prediction and experimental verification, using radar echoes from Mercury, of a new consequence of the general theory of relativity – a time-delay effect for electromagnetic signals passing through gravitational fields.



    All these experiments, however, were confined to our solar system with its very weak gravitational fields and consequently small deviations, hard,to measure, from the Newtonian theory of gravity. Hence it was possible to test the general theory of relativity and other theories only in the first post-Newtonian approximation.



    The discovery of the binary pulsar

    Hulse’s and Taylor’s discovery in 1974 of the first binary pulsar, called PSR 1913 + 16 (PSR stands for pulsar, and 1913 + 16 specifies the pulsar’s position in the sky) thus brought about a revolution in the field. We have here two very small astronomical bodies, each with a radius of some ten kilometres but with a mass comparable with that of the sun, and at a short distance from each other, only several times the moon’s distance from the earth. Here the deviations from Newton’s gravitational physics are large. As an example may be mentioned that the periastron shift, the rotation of the elliptical orbit that the pulsar (according to Kepler’s first law from the beginning of the 17th century) follows in this system, is 4 degrees per year. The corresponding relativistic shift for the most favourable example in our solar system, the above-mentioned perihelion motion of Mercury, is 43 seconds of arc per century (this is less than a tenth of the very much larger contributions to the perihelion motion caused by perturbations from other planets, chiefly Venus and Jupiter). The difference in size between the shifts is partly due to the orbital speed in the binary pulsar, which is almost five times greater than Mercury’s, and partly due to the pulsar performing about 250 times more orbits a year than Mercury. The orbiting time of the binary pulsar is less than eight hours, which can be compared with the one month our moon takes to orbit the earth.



    A very important property of the new pulsar is that its pulse period, the time between two beacon sweeps (0.05903 see) has proved to be extremely stable, as opposed to what applies to many other pulsars. The pulsar’s pulse period increases by less than 5% during 1 million years. This means that the pulsar can be used as a clock which for precision can compete with the best atomic clocks, This is a very useful feature when studying the characteristics of the system.



    The very stable pulse period is in fact a mean of the pulse period observed on earth over the time of one orbit of the pulsar system. The observed period actually varies by several tens of microseconds, i.e. by an amount that is much greater than the variation in the mean value. This is a Doppler effect, and led to the conclusion that the observed pulsar moves in a periodic orbit, meaning that it must have a companion. As the pulsar approaches the earth, the pulses reach the earth more frequently; as it recedes they arrive less frequently. From the variation in pulse period, conclusions can be drawn about the pulsar’s speed in its orbit and other important features of the system.



    Demonstration of gravitational waves

    A very important observation was made when the system had been followed for some years. This followed theoretical predictions made shortly after the original discovery of the pulsar. It was found that the orbit period is declining: the two astronomical bodies are rotating faster and faster about each other in an increasingly tight orbit. The change is very small. It corresponds to a reduction of the orbit period by about 75 millionths of a second per year, but, through observation over sufficient time, it is nevertheless fully measurable. This change was presumed to occur because the system is emitting energy in the form of gravitational waves in accordance with what Einstein in 1916 predicted should happen to masses moving relatively to each other. According to the latest data, the theoretically calculated value from the relativity theory agrees to within about one half of a percent with the observed value. The first report of this effect was made by Taylor and co-workers at the end of 1978, four years after the discovery of the binary pulsar was reported.



    The good agreement between the observed value and the theoretically calculated value of the orbital path can be seen as an indirect proof of the existence of gravitational waves. We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence. Many long-term projects have been started for making direct observations of gravitational waves impinging upon the earth. The radiation emitted by the binary pulsar is too weak to be observed on the earth with existing techniques. However, perhaps the violent perturbations of matter that take place when the two astronomical bodies in a binary star (or a binary pulsar) approach each other so closely that they fall into each other may give rise to gravitational waves that could be observed here. It is also hoped to be able to observe many other violent events in the universe. Gravitational wave astronomy is the latest, as yet unproven, branch of observational astronomy, where neutrino astronomy is the most direct predecessor. Gravitational wave astronomy would then be the first observational technique for which the basic principle was first tested in an astrophysical context. All earlier observational techniques in astronomy have been based on physical phenomena which first became known in a terrestrial connection.



    The radio waves from a pulsar are emitted in two bunches which sweep across space at the same rate as the pulsar rotates (upper figure). From a binary pulsar, gravitational waves are also emitted (lower figure).








    share|cite|improve this answer














    share|cite|improve this answer



    share|cite|improve this answer








    edited May 2 at 18:27









    Kyle Kanos

    21.9k115095




    21.9k115095










    answered May 2 at 17:25









    JEBJEB

    6,8891819




    6,8891819







    • 5




      $begingroup$
      In addition to carrying away energy, gravitational waves carry away angular momentum and linear momentum. The loss of angular momentum causes the binary orbit to lose its eccentricity and become circular. The loss of linear momentum causes the system to recoil, but this is usually not a large effect.
      $endgroup$
      – G. Smith
      May 2 at 20:22










    • $begingroup$
      "We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence" - oh, hai
      $endgroup$
      – Yakk
      2 days ago











    • $begingroup$
      @G.Smith I would think: Since the circular orbit maximizes angular momentum, the emission of radiation would carry away "opposite" angular momentum, leading to spin up of the system...?
      $endgroup$
      – JEB
      2 days ago












    • 5




      $begingroup$
      In addition to carrying away energy, gravitational waves carry away angular momentum and linear momentum. The loss of angular momentum causes the binary orbit to lose its eccentricity and become circular. The loss of linear momentum causes the system to recoil, but this is usually not a large effect.
      $endgroup$
      – G. Smith
      May 2 at 20:22










    • $begingroup$
      "We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence" - oh, hai
      $endgroup$
      – Yakk
      2 days ago











    • $begingroup$
      @G.Smith I would think: Since the circular orbit maximizes angular momentum, the emission of radiation would carry away "opposite" angular momentum, leading to spin up of the system...?
      $endgroup$
      – JEB
      2 days ago







    5




    5




    $begingroup$
    In addition to carrying away energy, gravitational waves carry away angular momentum and linear momentum. The loss of angular momentum causes the binary orbit to lose its eccentricity and become circular. The loss of linear momentum causes the system to recoil, but this is usually not a large effect.
    $endgroup$
    – G. Smith
    May 2 at 20:22




    $begingroup$
    In addition to carrying away energy, gravitational waves carry away angular momentum and linear momentum. The loss of angular momentum causes the binary orbit to lose its eccentricity and become circular. The loss of linear momentum causes the system to recoil, but this is usually not a large effect.
    $endgroup$
    – G. Smith
    May 2 at 20:22












    $begingroup$
    "We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence" - oh, hai
    $endgroup$
    – Yakk
    2 days ago





    $begingroup$
    "We will probably have to wait until next century for a direct demonstration of their existence" - oh, hai
    $endgroup$
    – Yakk
    2 days ago













    $begingroup$
    @G.Smith I would think: Since the circular orbit maximizes angular momentum, the emission of radiation would carry away "opposite" angular momentum, leading to spin up of the system...?
    $endgroup$
    – JEB
    2 days ago




    $begingroup$
    @G.Smith I would think: Since the circular orbit maximizes angular momentum, the emission of radiation would carry away "opposite" angular momentum, leading to spin up of the system...?
    $endgroup$
    – JEB
    2 days ago











    8












    $begingroup$

    Others got you covered about the nature of gravitational waves, so I'll just in case explicitly stress the logical problem of your question:




    We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun.




    Your (implied) assumption is wrong. Earth does lose energy; just not measurably much compared to the magnitude of binary black holes. (Afaik Earth loses more energy to tidal drag than gravitational waves.) Angular momentum is of course conserved in the whole system, but the loss mechanisms ought to be somewhat complicated as well.






    share|cite|improve this answer








    New contributor




    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.






    $endgroup$








    • 1




      $begingroup$
      Related: Does the Earth emit gravitational waves? Includes an estimate of how long the Earth will take to spiral in to the Sun via energy loss to gravitational waves. The timescale is sufficiently long that I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
      $endgroup$
      – Michael Seifert
      May 2 at 20:28










    • $begingroup$
      Do black holes experience tidal drag?
      $endgroup$
      – Display Name
      May 2 at 20:57






    • 2




      $begingroup$
      @Michael I dare say that the radiation pressure of sunlight might more than compensate for the 196 watts of gravitational radiation you calculate in that answer. ;)
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      May 2 at 23:06










    • $begingroup$
      @PM2Ring: radiation pressure gives radial force (on average) and does not compensate lost angular momentum.
      $endgroup$
      – A.V.S.
      2 days ago










    • $begingroup$
      @A.V.S. Good point.
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      2 days ago















    8












    $begingroup$

    Others got you covered about the nature of gravitational waves, so I'll just in case explicitly stress the logical problem of your question:




    We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun.




    Your (implied) assumption is wrong. Earth does lose energy; just not measurably much compared to the magnitude of binary black holes. (Afaik Earth loses more energy to tidal drag than gravitational waves.) Angular momentum is of course conserved in the whole system, but the loss mechanisms ought to be somewhat complicated as well.






    share|cite|improve this answer








    New contributor




    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.






    $endgroup$








    • 1




      $begingroup$
      Related: Does the Earth emit gravitational waves? Includes an estimate of how long the Earth will take to spiral in to the Sun via energy loss to gravitational waves. The timescale is sufficiently long that I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
      $endgroup$
      – Michael Seifert
      May 2 at 20:28










    • $begingroup$
      Do black holes experience tidal drag?
      $endgroup$
      – Display Name
      May 2 at 20:57






    • 2




      $begingroup$
      @Michael I dare say that the radiation pressure of sunlight might more than compensate for the 196 watts of gravitational radiation you calculate in that answer. ;)
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      May 2 at 23:06










    • $begingroup$
      @PM2Ring: radiation pressure gives radial force (on average) and does not compensate lost angular momentum.
      $endgroup$
      – A.V.S.
      2 days ago










    • $begingroup$
      @A.V.S. Good point.
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      2 days ago













    8












    8








    8





    $begingroup$

    Others got you covered about the nature of gravitational waves, so I'll just in case explicitly stress the logical problem of your question:




    We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun.




    Your (implied) assumption is wrong. Earth does lose energy; just not measurably much compared to the magnitude of binary black holes. (Afaik Earth loses more energy to tidal drag than gravitational waves.) Angular momentum is of course conserved in the whole system, but the loss mechanisms ought to be somewhat complicated as well.






    share|cite|improve this answer








    New contributor




    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.






    $endgroup$



    Others got you covered about the nature of gravitational waves, so I'll just in case explicitly stress the logical problem of your question:




    We here on earth are very glad that it will not emit its angular momentum and spiral into the sun.




    Your (implied) assumption is wrong. Earth does lose energy; just not measurably much compared to the magnitude of binary black holes. (Afaik Earth loses more energy to tidal drag than gravitational waves.) Angular momentum is of course conserved in the whole system, but the loss mechanisms ought to be somewhat complicated as well.







    share|cite|improve this answer








    New contributor




    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.









    share|cite|improve this answer



    share|cite|improve this answer






    New contributor




    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.









    answered May 2 at 19:58









    JoonasD6JoonasD6

    811




    811




    New contributor




    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.





    New contributor





    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.






    JoonasD6 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.







    • 1




      $begingroup$
      Related: Does the Earth emit gravitational waves? Includes an estimate of how long the Earth will take to spiral in to the Sun via energy loss to gravitational waves. The timescale is sufficiently long that I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
      $endgroup$
      – Michael Seifert
      May 2 at 20:28










    • $begingroup$
      Do black holes experience tidal drag?
      $endgroup$
      – Display Name
      May 2 at 20:57






    • 2




      $begingroup$
      @Michael I dare say that the radiation pressure of sunlight might more than compensate for the 196 watts of gravitational radiation you calculate in that answer. ;)
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      May 2 at 23:06










    • $begingroup$
      @PM2Ring: radiation pressure gives radial force (on average) and does not compensate lost angular momentum.
      $endgroup$
      – A.V.S.
      2 days ago










    • $begingroup$
      @A.V.S. Good point.
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      2 days ago












    • 1




      $begingroup$
      Related: Does the Earth emit gravitational waves? Includes an estimate of how long the Earth will take to spiral in to the Sun via energy loss to gravitational waves. The timescale is sufficiently long that I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
      $endgroup$
      – Michael Seifert
      May 2 at 20:28










    • $begingroup$
      Do black holes experience tidal drag?
      $endgroup$
      – Display Name
      May 2 at 20:57






    • 2




      $begingroup$
      @Michael I dare say that the radiation pressure of sunlight might more than compensate for the 196 watts of gravitational radiation you calculate in that answer. ;)
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      May 2 at 23:06










    • $begingroup$
      @PM2Ring: radiation pressure gives radial force (on average) and does not compensate lost angular momentum.
      $endgroup$
      – A.V.S.
      2 days ago










    • $begingroup$
      @A.V.S. Good point.
      $endgroup$
      – PM 2Ring
      2 days ago







    1




    1




    $begingroup$
    Related: Does the Earth emit gravitational waves? Includes an estimate of how long the Earth will take to spiral in to the Sun via energy loss to gravitational waves. The timescale is sufficiently long that I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
    $endgroup$
    – Michael Seifert
    May 2 at 20:28




    $begingroup$
    Related: Does the Earth emit gravitational waves? Includes an estimate of how long the Earth will take to spiral in to the Sun via energy loss to gravitational waves. The timescale is sufficiently long that I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
    $endgroup$
    – Michael Seifert
    May 2 at 20:28












    $begingroup$
    Do black holes experience tidal drag?
    $endgroup$
    – Display Name
    May 2 at 20:57




    $begingroup$
    Do black holes experience tidal drag?
    $endgroup$
    – Display Name
    May 2 at 20:57




    2




    2




    $begingroup$
    @Michael I dare say that the radiation pressure of sunlight might more than compensate for the 196 watts of gravitational radiation you calculate in that answer. ;)
    $endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    May 2 at 23:06




    $begingroup$
    @Michael I dare say that the radiation pressure of sunlight might more than compensate for the 196 watts of gravitational radiation you calculate in that answer. ;)
    $endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    May 2 at 23:06












    $begingroup$
    @PM2Ring: radiation pressure gives radial force (on average) and does not compensate lost angular momentum.
    $endgroup$
    – A.V.S.
    2 days ago




    $begingroup$
    @PM2Ring: radiation pressure gives radial force (on average) and does not compensate lost angular momentum.
    $endgroup$
    – A.V.S.
    2 days ago












    $begingroup$
    @A.V.S. Good point.
    $endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    2 days ago




    $begingroup$
    @A.V.S. Good point.
    $endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    2 days ago











    0












    $begingroup$

    Except gravitational waves, there is also no stable circular orbit near black hole. In schwarschild black hole the limit is 3 times the schwarszchild radius.



    Thats because in GR gravitation is usually stronger than in Newton (usually called - the energy of gravitational field also creates gravity, but i dont think this statement actually stands on solid ground. I never saw any definition of "energy of gravitational field" in GR and i think there cannot be any due to the equivalence principle. But dont take my word for it.)






    share|cite|improve this answer









    $endgroup$

















      0












      $begingroup$

      Except gravitational waves, there is also no stable circular orbit near black hole. In schwarschild black hole the limit is 3 times the schwarszchild radius.



      Thats because in GR gravitation is usually stronger than in Newton (usually called - the energy of gravitational field also creates gravity, but i dont think this statement actually stands on solid ground. I never saw any definition of "energy of gravitational field" in GR and i think there cannot be any due to the equivalence principle. But dont take my word for it.)






      share|cite|improve this answer









      $endgroup$















        0












        0








        0





        $begingroup$

        Except gravitational waves, there is also no stable circular orbit near black hole. In schwarschild black hole the limit is 3 times the schwarszchild radius.



        Thats because in GR gravitation is usually stronger than in Newton (usually called - the energy of gravitational field also creates gravity, but i dont think this statement actually stands on solid ground. I never saw any definition of "energy of gravitational field" in GR and i think there cannot be any due to the equivalence principle. But dont take my word for it.)






        share|cite|improve this answer









        $endgroup$



        Except gravitational waves, there is also no stable circular orbit near black hole. In schwarschild black hole the limit is 3 times the schwarszchild radius.



        Thats because in GR gravitation is usually stronger than in Newton (usually called - the energy of gravitational field also creates gravity, but i dont think this statement actually stands on solid ground. I never saw any definition of "energy of gravitational field" in GR and i think there cannot be any due to the equivalence principle. But dont take my word for it.)







        share|cite|improve this answer












        share|cite|improve this answer



        share|cite|improve this answer










        answered May 2 at 17:32









        UmaxoUmaxo

        524




        524



























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