Black Hole Coalescence
In Black Hole Coalescence, narrator Kate Yule details how a pair of black holes warp space and time when they coalesce. Learn how the energy is emitted as gravitational waves rather than light, and how Rainer Weiss was able to detect these waves through his detector 1.3 billion years later. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Einstein & Hawking: Masters of Our Universe, a mind-bending documentary that tells the story of how the two most famous scientists of the 20th Century transformed our understanding of the Universe and changed the world.
Lesson Express
Q: What is happening as the black holes come together?
A: They are creating greater and greater warping of space and time.
Q: What happens when the two black holes coalesce?
A: When the black holes coalesce, three times the mass of the Sun is converted into pure energy.
Q: How much energy is created, and how is it released?
A: The black holes release 50 times the output of all the stars in the Universe put together as gravitational waves.
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