99.8% Wrong: NASA’s Fermi scientists are fooling themselves
Gamma rays from black holes? It’s an incredible idea… and it’s probably wrong.
“That’s the next step: to simultaneously see [gravitational waves] with three, four or five interferometers, localize it quickly, within minutes, and have other observatories catch it instantly, and catch it in the optical or the X-ray bands. That’s going to provide a whole new understanding in these cataclysmic events.” -Dave Reitze, executive director of LIGO
On September 14th, 2015, the Advanced LIGO detectors in Hanover, WA and Livingston, LA, both detected a strong, coherent and compelling gravitational wave signal: the first direct detection of such an event. After theoretical and experimental research and development work spanning five decades, an unambiguous signal lasting just 20 milliseconds was recorded, consistently, in both detectors. As a result, we saw the incredible: two black holes, 36 and 29 solar masses apiece, completed their inspiral and merged together, creating a 62 solar mass black hole in the end, spinning at 67% the speed of light, while radiating the other three solar masses away in the form of gravitational waves, having converted them into pure energy from Einstein’s E = mc^2.
