{"id":17418,"date":"2018-09-07T19:34:32","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T00:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=17418"},"modified":"2018-09-07T19:34:32","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T00:34:32","slug":"we-wouldnt-feel-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/09\/07\/we-wouldnt-feel-a-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"We Wouldn&#8217;t Feel A Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong> <\/em>(1 September 2018, paywall) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg23931934-400-freak-gravitational-waves-could-form-black-holes-and-destroy-earth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reports<\/a> on a possible natural phenomenon that would wipe us out without a chance of redemption:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Most gravitational waves \u2013 ripples in the fabric of the universe caused by the motion of massive objects \u2013 are spherical. They propagate outwards like a 3D version of ripples on the surface of a pond after a stone is thrown in. But when a high energy object or particle moves at the speed of light, theory says it creates a different type of gravitational wave: flat, or plane-fronted waves, like a tidal wave.<\/p>\n<p>Frans Pretorius at Princeton University in New Jersey and William East at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada simulated what happens if two of these unusual waves collide.<\/p>\n<p>Smaller varieties simply pass through one another and go on to dissipate. But when they get large enough, a pair of colliding waves can collapse into a black hole, Pretorius and East found. \u201cThese particles have a lot of energy and produce curvature in space-time, and when the waves collide, that curvature wraps in on itself,\u201d says Pretorius.<\/p>\n<p>The black hole left behind would devour about 85 per cent of the energy in the waves, the pair found. Most of the remaining energy would stream outwards in a shell of slightly weaker gravitational waves, while a small proportion of the waves would be essentially caught in orbit, circling the black hole forever (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.arxiv.org\/abs\/1807.11562v1\">arxiv.org\/abs\/1807.11562v1<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m just fascinated at both the idea of gravitational waves colliding causing a black hole &#8211; and that a gravitational wave is itself affected by gravitation. I suppose it&#8217;s inevitable, given how a black hole warps the area around it, but I&#8217;m still boggling a bit. A measure of my lack of knowledge about exotic physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NewScientist (1 September 2018, paywall) reports on a possible natural phenomenon that would wipe us out without a chance of redemption: Most gravitational waves \u2013 ripples in the fabric of the universe caused by the motion of massive objects \u2013 are spherical. They propagate outwards like a 3D version of \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/09\/07\/we-wouldnt-feel-a-thing\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17419,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17418\/revisions\/17419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}