You may not feel it, but at every moment you are being stretched or squeezed by the ripples of space-time just slightly. These ripples, called gravitational waves, are caused by the motion of massive objects like black holes, and researchers have detected that gravitational waves are slightly distorting the Earth. But what if they distorted the Earth by a nontrivial amount?
In this episode of Dead Planets Society, hosts Chelsea White and Leah Crane discuss whether and what it’s like to create gravitational waves strong enough to be felt, or gravitational forces strong enough to tear planets apart. I’m curious if you can make waves. This means manipulating a black hole. Black holes are the densest objects in the universe and the most efficient gravitational wave machines.
But it’s not as simple as putting a pair of black holes next to a planet and making them collide. Because even with waves involved, the gravitational pull from the black hole would destroy the planet. In this episode, gravitational wave researcher Christopher Berry joins Leah and Chelsea on tuning the frequencies of the gravitational waves that oscillate entire planets, whether gravitational waves can disintegrate the entire solar system, and the deadly black hole symphony. talk about how to create It could transmit its cosmic music throughout the universe.
Dead Planets Society is a podcast of wild ideas about how to tweak the universe, from punching holes in planets to uniting worlds. Asteroid belt – and subject them to the laws of physics to see how they deal with it.
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