Gravitational wave detectors could detect a black hole falling into a wormhole. If there were such
Gravitational wave detectors have discovered many signals from merging black holes in the last few years. But what if you could see something more interesting, such as wormholes?
A black hole falling into such a wormhole would also emit gravitational waves, but they would look different than those emitted when two black holes merge. Theoretically, the LIGO and Virgo detectors would also be able to register such waves.
What are wormholes ?
In short, the wormhole, once also called the Einstein-Rosen bridge, is a kind of shortcut between two distant points in the universe or, in the extreme version, a transition from one universe to another. So far, there is no evidence that such creations even exist. The only thing that can be said about them at the moment is that they are not ruled out by general relativity and that they look phenomenal in Hollywood sci-fi productions.
From the outside, wormholes may look like black holes, but they differ in that when an object falls into one, it stays there. When something falls into the tunnel, it may fly through it to the other side.
It should be emphasized, however, that wormholes are pure speculation, with a capital S. However, if they exist, researchers now have the instruments that should allow them to be discovered, says William Gabella, a physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
If a black hole fell into a wormhole ...
Gabella and colleagues analyzed the case of a black hole five times the mass of the Sun orbiting around a wormhole 1.6 billion light-years from Earth. According to the calculations, the black hole orbiting the tunnel would gradually spiral down onto it, just as it does in two black hole systems. Initially, the gravitational waves emitted in this way would look identical to the standard gravitational waves emitted by two black holes. Their frequency would increase to end in one high pitch.
However, once it reached the center of the wormhole, a black hole would pass through it. The researchers decided to investigate what would happen if, after such a flight, it appeared, for example, in another universe. In that case, the gravitational waves in the first universe will disappear abruptly. In the second universe, a black hole would shoot from the other side of the tunnel only to spiral back into it. Then it would reappear in universe one while passing through the tunnel.
If such a black hole came back, it would spiral out of the tunnel first, perhaps emitting the opposite of the classical pattern of gravitational waves, and then back into it again. Over time, as it bounces between both universes, emitting successive bursts of gravitational waves in both, interrupted by silence, it would emit energy until it finally ended its journey in the middle of the tunnel.
Such a gravitational wave pattern cannot appear for two black holes. So it would be a clear signal that we are dealing with a wormhole, says Dejan Stojkovic, a physicist at the University of Buffalo in New York.
Since we already have detectors, it is appropriate to listen
LIGO detectors in the USA and Virgo in Italy detect gravitational waves, i.e. the ripples of space-time emitted by merging black holes and dense remnants of massive stars, the so-called neutron stars. These objects, before merging into one, spiral faster and faster, emitting huge amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves. Losing energy to emit these waves, they gradually move closer to each other, and over time they merge into one more massive object.
Since 2015, over a dozen of such signals have already been registered, and over time scientists will start looking for more unusual gravitational waves. Perhaps at some point it will be possible to record the passage of a black hole through a wormhole. If that's not impossible… maybe it's worth listening, just in case.
Don't miss out on new texts. Follow Spider's Web on Google News .
Gravitational wave detectors could detect a black hole falling into a wormhole. If there were such
Comments
Post a Comment