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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Is this cool or what?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://math.wvu.edu/~zetienne/SENR/">https://math.wvu.edu/~zetienne/SENR/</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I have always found it crazy amazing how quickly that last little bit of rotational energy bleeds away when two black holes collide. If you do the I * R * omega^2 calculation before the merger and after, we know how to calculate the distance between the two black holes before collision (because we know their masses and their rotational frequency) and we know how far they had to fall inward, even a Newtonian guy can calculate how much energy that was that just went away and (SURPRISE) it agrees with what the LIGO people tell us.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But it is a crazy big amount of energy.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I confess to having been a flaming unbeliever, but now I found religion on LIGO: that was the most important scientific instrument since Hubble, and in some ways it was more informative than Hubble.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike <o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>