Very interesting. LIGO's observation is a one point dataset, but the principle of mediocrity still allows one to make some predictions from it. There would surely be some relatively simple maths that should tell us that if the universe contains only stellar black holes, approximately how often we should see a collision. And from that we could say how likely/unlikely it would be for LIGO to make such an observation during its operating period. If the chance was below a reasonable confidence interval, that alone would make a persuasive argument for something like what you are suggesting. But without that figure, you're making a guess, albeit one that seems intuitively plausible.
On Thursday, May 26, 2016 at 1:04:08 AM UTC+10, John Clark wrote: > > On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 10:17 PM, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > >> Nice idea! And I like your prediction of many more LIGO events being >> detected. >> One postscript is that this plays in nicely with Smolin's evolutionary >> universe idea, that predicts we should be living in a universe >> optimised for black hole creation. If this idea of primordial black >> holes pays off, then it would be time to dust off Smolin's proposal >> again. >> > > That is a very good point. 85% of all matter going into Black Holes must > be pretty near the maximum, I don't think an observer could expect to find > himself in a universe where the laws of physics conspired to produce a lot > more Black Holes than that, after all you need at least a little non-black > hole matter to make planets and stars and life. Perhaps future historians > will look back at Charles Darwin not just as a great biologist but as a > great cosmologist too. > > It really is incredible when you think about it. A Black Hole pair like > the one LIGO detected has existed for 13.8 billion years but it only made > enough noise for LIGO to hear it for a fifth of a second, and yet LIGO > managed to hear such a pair after just a few weeks of listening. And it had > not even reached it's full sensitivity yet. Either the LIGO people were > extraordinarily lucky or there are one hell of a lot of Black Holes out > there, perhaps enough to account for Dark Matter. LIGO goes back online in > September so we should know before the end of the year what's going on. > > John K Clark > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
