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A new math shortcut helps describe black hole collisions

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What kind of situation can such a merger create? Researchers are unsure, as the newly opened frontier of the universe. But there are some options.

First, astronomers can imagine a black hole of about 80 or 100 solar masses colliding with a smaller black hole the size of about 5 solar masses that collide.

Another possibility would be a collision between a black hole in the star variety of the garden and a relatively rough black hole left over from the Big Bang—“primordial” black hole. These can have up to 1 percent of the solar mass, for the most part Black holes detected by LIGO so far they weigh more than 10 solar masses.

Earlier this year, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics used the Field and Khanna substitute model to analyze LIGO data to find signs of gravitational waves. fusions that enclose primitive black holes. Although no one was found, they were able to place more precise limits on the potential abundance of this hypothetical black hole class.

Besides, LISA, an observatory of gravitational waves based on planned space, would one day be able to see mergers between ordinary black holes and supermassive varieties in galaxy centers, some with a mass of a billion suns or more. The future of LISA is uncertain; The first launch date is 2035, and the funding situation is still unclear. But if it launches and when, we can see mergers in mass relationships of more than a billion.

Break point

Some in this area, including Hughes, have said that the success of the new model is “the senseless effectiveness of point-particle approximations,” emphasizing that the low-mass efficiency of the model is a real mystery. Why should researchers ignore critical details of the small black hole and get the right answer?

“He’s telling us something about the underlying physics,” Khanna said, though exactly that remains a source of curiosity. “We don’t have to worry about two objects surrounded by event horizons, objects that can be distorted and interact in strange ways with each other.” But no one knows why.

In the absence of an answer, Field and Khanna are trying to extend their model to more realistic situations. In a document to be published on the arxiv.org pre-print server earlier this summer, researchers are turning to a larger black hole that is expected to be in an astrophysically realistic state. Again, their model links the findings of simulations of numerical relativity in mass relations up to 3.

They plan to study black holes that approach each other in elliptical rather than completely circular orbits. Along with Hughes, they also intend to introduce the notion of “misaligned orbit” – cases in which black holes are relative to each other and orbit in different geometric planes.

Eventually, they hope to learn from their model by trying to make a break. Can it function in a mass ratio of 2 or less? Field and Khanna want to know. “Confidence in the approach is gained when it fails,” he said Richard Price, Physicist at MIT. “When you take an approach that gets amazingly good results, you wonder if you’re somehow cheating, unconsciously using a result that you shouldn’t have access to.” If Field and Khanna push their model to the breaking point, he added, “then you’d know that what you’re doing isn’t cheating – you just have an approach that works better than you expected.”

Original story reprint with permission Quanta magazine, independent publisher’s publication Simons Foundation its mission is to improve public knowledge of science by covering developments and trends in research in mathematics and physics and life sciences.


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