tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post5627698288209060364..comments2024-03-26T21:35:39.266-07:00Comments on CANDELS: Galaxy Evolution and Gravitational Waves, Part IAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17704873086455232100noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-50246528778696396392013-11-18T14:56:51.380-07:002013-11-18T14:56:51.380-07:00Thanks for your comment. For brevity’s sake, and a...Thanks for your comment. For brevity’s sake, and also for the sake of focusing on galaxy evolution, I didn’t get into the possibility of detecting individual merging pairs of black holes. As I’m sure you know, this is possible with pulsar timing arrays as well as with LIGO/Virgo. My point was that if I had to wager how merging pairs of *supermassive* black holes will first be detected, I would bet on the stochastic background over an individual detection. (Ordinary black holes are another story altogether.) But who knows what Nature will actually tell us. As for merging white dwarf pairs, I was giving an example of a GW source that’s outside the detection regime for pulsar timing arrays. What I didn’t say is that the ideal detector for such pairs, the LISA mission (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) was sadly canceled due to funding limitations. Not wanting to open up this “can of worms”, I suppose I did make it sound like LIGO/Virgo would detect white dwarfs, which of course it’s not designed for.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3612697638678594412.post-65335756073783194322013-11-07T13:23:41.581-07:002013-11-07T13:23:41.581-07:00There are a few misleading statements about the LI...There are a few misleading statements about the LIGO/Virgo source population here. To be detected, a binary system needs to be orbiting with a frequency that the detector is sensitive to (tens to thousands of times per second for LIGO/Virgo). White dwarfs, being much larger than neutron stars or stellar-mass back holes, will collide with each other before they get to orbit that fast. <br /><br />LIGO/Virgo ends up being sensitive to binaries that contain neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes (up to about a hundred solar masses) only in the final seconds before merger, but the advanced versions will be capable of detecting binary systems in distant galaxies (~hundreds of megaparsecs) - which is fortunate, because we don't expect the actual mergers to happen very often in our own galaxy.Jocelynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13654426960479129569noreply@blogger.com