gravitational waves Astronomy has just given us another great gift: the first Watch One confirmation from Stephen Hawkingprediction about black hole.
The analysis of the first detection of gravitational waves carried out in 2015, GW150914, confirmed the Hawking region theory. It states that under classical physics, the area of a black hole’s event horizon can only grow – and never get smaller.
This work gives us new tools to examine this mystery, and to test the limits of our understanding of the universe.
“It’s possible that there will be zoos with different compact objects, and while some black holes follow Einstein and Hawking’s laws, others may be slightly different monsters.” Astrophysicist Maximiliano Essi said: dari Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research di Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“So it’s not like I took this test once and it was done. I did this once, and that was the start.”
Hawking first proposed his theory in 1971. He predicted that the surface area of a black hole’s event horizon would never decrease, but only increase.
The event horizon is not the black hole itself, but the radius at which the speed of light in a vacuum is not sufficient to escape the gravitational field generated by the black hole’s singularity. proportional to the mass of the black hole. Because black holes can only gain mass, below General relativity, the event horizon should only be able to grow.
(This increment-only model is also curiously similar to another theorem, the second law Thermodynamics. This states that entropy – the progression from order to chaos in the universe – can only increase. Black holes also have entropy associated with them, and compared straight to the surface area of their event horizon.)
Computationally, the region theory is satisfied, but it is difficult to confirm it from an observational point of view – especially since black holes are difficult to observe directly, because they do not emit detectable radiation. But then, we detected gravitational ripples spreading through space-time as a result of the collision between these two mysterious objects.
This is GW150914, the summary Bloop From the collision recorded by the LIGO interferometer changed everything. This is the first direct discovery of not one, but two black holes. Together, they form a larger black hole.
Then this black hole rumbled softly, like a bell ringing. In 2019, Isi and his colleagues discovered how to detect this resonant signal. Now they have cracked the code, and cracked it to calculate the mass and spin of the last black hole.
They also performed a new analysis of the merging signal to calculate the mass and rotation of the previously merged black hole. Since mass and rotation are related to the region of the event horizon, this allows them to calculate the event horizon for all three objects.
If the size of the event horizon can be reduced, then the event horizon of the last black hole combined must be smaller than the two black holes it created. According to their calculations, the smaller black hole has a total event horizon area of 235,000 square kilometers (91,000 square miles). The last black hole has an area of 367,000 square kilometers.
“The data show with great confidence that the area of the horizon has increased after the merger, and that the law of the area is met with a very high probability,” kata now.
“It is a relief that our results are consistent with the model we expected, and confirm our understanding of this complex black hole merger.”
At least in the short term. Under quantum mechanics – which is incompatible with classical physics – Hawking later predicted that over a very long period of time, black holes would lose mass in the form of black body radiation we now call Hawking Radiation. So a black hole’s event horizon may still eventually shrink.
Obviously, this needs to be studied more closely in the future. Meanwhile, Isi and his team’s work has provided us with a new toolbox to verify other observations of gravitational waves, in hopes of gaining more insight into black holes and the physics of the universe.
“It’s exciting that we can think in new and innovative ways about gravitational wave data, and ask questions that we thought we couldn’t do before.” kata now.
“We can continue to extract bits of information that speak directly to the substrate of what we think we understand. One day, this data might reveal something we didn’t expect.”
Search published in physical review message.
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