Gravitational Waves: when black holes are Mittu aunt's Ladoos!!

Suppose…

    ...you have two ladoos in hand. You weighed each and found one 8 and the other 12 grams. Now, you want a bigger ladoo from those two and, wuhooo!, here I am with a glowing bulb over my head and helping hands. You hand them over to me, and I crush them both and mould the crumps of both ladoos together making a bigger ladoo for you. But, as you weigh the bigger ladoo I just made, you find it to be 17 gram. 12 + 8 = ???! Haa, yes, there arises a question on the missing 3 gram!

So, what yeh gonna do? Huh! Blame me?? Nah, I didn’t - I didn’t eat it.

Okay, so what’s the matter? Consider these ladoos to be black holes. Yeah, I mean it. Such a case was found with black holes as well. It was found that two black holes of solar masses 36 and 29, collapsed not to form a black hole of 36 + 29 = 65 solar mass, but of 62 solar mass. The missing 3 solar mass here went into the production of gravitational waves.

And, that was the birth of gravitational waves. Not just this collision, but gravitational waves are produced by events such as the collapse of supernovae, the merging of neutron stars or white dwarfs et cetera. Or comparatively weaker gravitational waves are produced simply by any accelerated massive objects (neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other) which disrupts the space-time fabric, causing waves. Some things seem complicated? Indigestible terms? Don’t worry, proceed forth for easier understanding.

Black Hole

When a massive star ⭐ explodes, the materials left behind gravitationally collapse, the gravitation here becomes stronger than any other force that it will fall into a gravitational well and become the You-know-What - singularity!

So, what’s a singularity?

Singularity

It is a one-dimensional point, containing a huge - very very huge mass in an infinitely small space. The gravitational force here is infinite, and so is its density. The laws of physics that we hold true now, becomes all false and absurd at singularity.

👀Gravitational waves

Basically, they are a type of strain. If you know, a strain is basically the change of one dimension upon the original dimension. That is, gravitational waves are change in length per unit length of the space-time fabric.

Drop a stone to a water body. Imagine the scene over the surface of water. Now, throw a stone to the water body. Imagine the same. See, the difference? Try imagining the scene if a leaf falls on to the surface as well. Similarly is the case of the gravitational waves, which are ripples over the sheet of space and time, the space-time fabric.

It was year 1916, when Albert Einstein - don’t tell me you dunn’now this guy, seriously - proposed the existence of gravitational waves by his General Theory of Relativity. And, the arrow of time, which many scientists claim to be forward alone, travelled a lot till 1974, which on the way took off Einstein’s life 😳, and then, we got proof for the existence of the mysterious - gravitational waves.

If you put a cricket ball on a stretched sheet, imagine what would happen. The ball will make a curve on the sheet, yes. Now, if you add a small ball to it, accelerating it on a straight line, it would orbit the cricket ball because of the curve made by it. Similarly, is the gravitational attraction as explained by gravitational waves.

Let’s talk a bit about Newtonian Gravitation

Long ago, before 1686, an apple would have knocked on Newton’s head...

Sir Isaac Newton had proposed a Universal Law of Gravitation, in 1686, and he presented gravity as a force. Now, by the gravitational waves, what we claim is that gravitational attraction is rather by a distortion in the space-time, and not much of a force. We can use the Newtonian formula effectively for the propulsion of rockets, satellites etc et al. But, when it comes to the case of black holes and blahs, it could fail.

🙄🙄🙄

~Echo Delta John