the sound of a gravitational wave
24 May, 2008 17:52
"In thinking about gravitational waves as tools for understanding
astronomical objects, one point that I stress very strongly is that
they cannot be used to form images - GW astronomy cannot be a visual
affair!
Instead, I advocate thinking about them as sound-like: Gravitational waves encode in an aural-like manner the dynamics of the source that generates them. You can almost think of as language-like: The signal that we "hear" encodes information about its source. Our goal as theorists and (eventual) GW astronomers is to understand that encoding, and thus to map those signals we "hear" into a deeper understanding of their sources."
- Equal mass binary gravitational waves:
- Two neutron stars, each of 1 ½ solar masses: gravitational_1.wav
- Two black holes, each of 2 ½ solar masses: gravitational_2.wav
- Two black holes, each of 50 solar masses: gravitational_3.wav
- Extreme mass ratio binary gravitational waves:
- Initially circular orbit, into rapidly spinning black hole: gravitational_4.wav
- Initially circular orbit, into slowly spinning black hole: gravitational_5.wav
- Initially highly eccentric orbit, into rapidly spinning black hole: gravitational_6.wav
Source for all the content above: http://web.mit.edu/sahughes/www/sounds.html (files located locally)
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