[ExI] LIGO: RE: Hey, look on the bright side

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 11:51 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] LIGO: RE: Hey, look on the bright side

 

>>…I am still trying to get my head around that: how could we have seen two crazy-unlikely events in just a few weeks?  My view of the cosmos must be serious flawed.  COOL!

 spike

 

>…This expresses my feeling exactly.  I think somewhere along the line I lost contact with the human race and am seriously out of contact with reality.  I am still stunned.  But as you say, life will go on and it probably won't be as bad as the worst and not as good as the best, which is mostly how it goes all the time.  This too will pass.  bill w

 

 

Pass?  Pretty soon we will get more data, and find out what is the probability of what we saw.  It must be extraordinarily low.  Or I am still missing something fundamental.

After I reread what I wrote initially, it occurred to me some might have interpreted it to refer to political events, but what I had in mind were the two LIGO events, the one detected in September 2015 and the other in Christmas gift in December 2015.

Regarding that other business, I went to bed last night not knowing who won that election but knowing my team was skunked.  The prophets were right however: I looked out my window this morning, there was a big bright yellow thing out there: a nuclear explosion.  My favorite reactor showed up right on time; the sun rose this morning.  I expect it will tomorrow as well.

All this has me thinking however: if black hole mergers can make this signal, then neutron binaries can too, or something that looks a lot like it.  Then we would have instant formation of an event horizon, so the endgame should differ slightly from a black hole binaries or neutron-black hole mergers.  This is making me crazy: I can’t figure out how two black holes could have formed that close to each other to start with.  I can see how two neutron stars could, but if so, those should have been smaller than those seen in both mergers.  Crazy, just crazy.

Oh what a fun time to be living.  I urge everyone to get off your butts and exercise every day, watch what you eat, sleep in your own bed every night, wear a seatbelt or a helmet, try to live as long as you can because it can only get better once we figure out how we got two events in a space of time we thought less than a tenth of a percent chance we would get any detections.  Soon, we will know.

spike

 

 

 

 

 

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