Black holes merging to become bigger black holes

[John F Sowa]

Two articles about merging black holes -- how they emit gravitational waves, and how new methods of detecting those waves show how they rotate around each other and finally merge.

Implications for ontology:   The complexity of these processes and the great amount of totally new information shows that no current ontology can ever be complete.  There is always an open-ended amount of previously unexpected information that raises many new questions that had never been considered.

This example is from extreme outer space.  But there are also many kinds of new information coming from extreme inner space -- the unknown and previously unimagined processes inside the brains of humans and other animals.

Summary:  There cannot be anything that could be called a complete ontology of everything.   Every ontology is an approximation that must constantly be  revised and extended.  

John

 

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From: "John F Sowa" <so...@bestweb.net>
To: Scott Hannahs <s...@alum.mit.edu>

Thanks for the two references.  The first one is a good overview.  And I agree that the second one is "surprisingly readable".   It doesn't require me to remember any of the equations I forgot many years ago.

John

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From: "Scott Hannahs" <s...@alum.mit.edu>

Well, here is the link to a good technical description of the paper

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/160

And this may be behind a paywall, but it is a surprisingly readable paper for GR!

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/kw5g-d732?__cf_chl_tk=u_5_OkyDPQAZ20paQvhEr6HWn1F_XVWH7ah7970ZNlY-1758040378-1.0.1.1-pIORf_TYnmJeDbSlegnv0DAptdiW1uI_JUqUi24HLkM

I am not sure how Hawking’s Second Law of Black Hole Mechanics, that their entropy, horizon  area, mass, etc. do not decrease over time is consistent with the evaporation of black holes due to quantum Hawking Radiation.  Possibly the Hawking Radiation is so small for reasonable sized black holes?  Evaporation time in seconds, approx 1e-27 (mass in grams)^3.  Since the solar mass ~ 10^33 gm this means 10^72 seconds or 10^65 years for a 1 solar mass black hole or many many times the age of the universe.  So that “law” may be approximate?

But a million tonne black hole (ie tiny) would decay in about a year.

-Scott