5 Facts We Can Learn If LIGO Detects Merging Neutron Stars
Are we about to make a breakthrough to go beyond black holes? Here’s what it means if we do!
“It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics.” -Martin Rees
If there’s one major difference between General Relativity and Newtonian gravity, it’s this: in Einstein’s theory, nothing lasts forever. Even if you had two perfectly stable masses in orbit around one another — masses that never burned out, lost material, or otherwise changed — their orbits would eventually decay. Whereas in Newtonian gravity, two masses would orbit their mutual center of gravity for an eternity, relativity tells us that a tiny amount of energy gets lost with every moment that one mass is accelerated by the gravitational field it passes through. That energy doesn’t disappear, but gets carried away in the form of gravitational waves. Over long enough time periods, enough energy is radiated away that those two orbiting masses will touch and…
