Might a gravitational wave rip aside a complete planet?


You might not really feel it, however at each single second you’re being ever-so-slightly stretched and squeezed by ripples in space-time. These ripples, known as gravitational waves, are attributable to the actions of large objects like black holes, and researchers have detected them warping Earth by minuscule quantities. However what in the event that they warped Earth by non-minuscule quantities?

On this episode of Lifeless Planets Society, our hosts Chelsea Whyte and Leah Crane get interested in whether or not we might make a gravitational wave that might be sturdy sufficient to really feel – and what that is likely to be like – and even sturdy sufficient to tear aside a planet. This implies manipulating black holes as a result of they’re the densest objects within the universe, so they’re essentially the most environment friendly gravitational wave machines on the market.

But it surely isn’t as simple as simply placing a pair of black holes subsequent to the planet and smashing them collectively, as a result of the gravity from the black holes would destroy the planet no matter any waves concerned. Gravitational wave researcher Christopher Berry joins Leah and Chelsea this episode to speak about tuning the frequency of gravitational waves to vibrate the entire planet aside, whether or not it might be doable to disassemble your complete photo voltaic system with gravitational waves and easy methods to create a lethal black gap symphony that would beam its cosmic music throughout the universe.

Lifeless Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish concepts about easy methods to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a gap in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt – and topics them to the legal guidelines of physics to see how they fare.

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