Hi Chris, With a single event it's hard to know if luck was involved. But since the recent upgrades, LIGO is much more sensitive than it was years ago -- so detecting something this time was maybe not unexpected. Still, much of all this is unknown which is why gravity wave (GW) research is so interesting. You'll read numbers like "2 per year to 3 per day" in:
https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~ajw/IntroPapers/christensen.pdf It's not just black holes (BH) but also neutron stars (NS) and so as you read papers you'll see BH-BH, NS-NS, and even BH-NS mentioned. On the topic of expected event rates, here are two more papers to keep you busy: https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~jkanner/ligo-fermi/talks/150914_Siellez_coincident_rate.pdf https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0103/T1300432/002/main.pdf /tvb ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Albertson To: Tom Van Baak ; Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 9:33 AM Subject: Re: [time-nuts] LIGO detects gravitational waves I've been wondering if this would ever happen in our lifetime. The detector is good but still it requires such a huge and rare event to be detectable as two black holes crashing into each other. How often does that happen? Are black hole ever formed in pairs, if not a crash would be very unlikely. Is this a case of unbelievable luck or is this an every few years event? I guess we will find out On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 8:00 AM, Tom Van Baak <t...@leapsecond.com> wrote: >From the live stream (https://youtu.be/c7293kAiPZw) Announced a couple of minutes ago Screen captures attached The ultimate time nuts relativity experiment... /tvb _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
