Re:Freeman Dyson: Gravitational Machines
by photochemsyn on Friday June 09, 2023 @10:26AM
(#36258289)
Dyson was quite the visionary. LIGO / Virgo gravitational wave detectors have confirmed all this (with much more development from people like Caltech's Kip Thorne and many others):
> "The energy source of the machine is the gravitational potential between the stars A and B. As the machine continues to operate, the stars A and B will gradually be drawn closer together, their negative potential energy will increase and their orbital velocity V will also increase... the loss of energy by gravitational radiation will bring the two stars closer with ever-increasing speed, until in the last second of their lives they plunge together and release a gravitational flash at a frequency of about 200 cycles and of unimaginable intensity."
The Ligo Lab's youtube channel has lots of great videos on the topic, from the sounds made by a pair of colliding black holes to long talks about how certain elements are mostly made by colliding neutron stars:
> "The energy source of the machine is the gravitational potential between the stars A and B. As the machine continues to operate, the stars A and B will gradually be drawn closer together, their negative potential energy will increase and their orbital velocity V will also increase... the loss of energy by gravitational radiation will bring the two stars closer with ever-increasing speed, until in the last second of their lives they plunge together and release a gravitational flash at a frequency of about 200 cycles and of unimaginable intensity."
The Ligo Lab's youtube channel has lots of great videos on the topic, from the sounds made by a pair of colliding black holes to long talks about how certain elements are mostly made by colliding neutron stars:
https://www.youtube.com/@LIGOLabCaltechMIT/playlists