{"id":94,"date":"2015-01-20T00:20:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T00:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/physics\/walkaboutthegalaxy\/?p=94"},"modified":"2022-03-15T14:39:27","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T14:39:27","slug":"close-black-holes-and-second-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/physics\/walkaboutthegalaxy\/2015\/01\/close-black-holes-and-second-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Close Black Holes and Second Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Josh, Addie and Tracy look ahead to the violent merger of supermassive black holes, the kind of event that would send out a large ripple of gravitational waves. These waves in space-time are a consequence of Einstein&#8217;s theory of gravity known as General Relativity, but measuring tiny ripples in the shape of space-time turns out, oddly enough, to be a bit tricky. Who&#8217;d a&#8217; thunk it? Maybe it&#8217;s something that can be seen in Second Life, a virtual world where Josh is setting up virtual office hours for his physics students. Now if only he can figure out how to give his avatar a nice head of hair.<br \/>\n<a title=\"Link to space.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.space.com\/24549-2-supermassive-black-holes-to-merge-when-galaxies-collide-video.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Video visualization of the black hole merger from Space.com<\/a><br \/>\n<a title=\"a link to universe today\" href=\"http:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/118248\/when-two-supermassive-black-holes-merge-its-a-galactic-train-wreck\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A news story about the black hole observations.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/walkabout-the-galaxy\/id867430953\">View on iTunes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Josh, Addie and Tracy look ahead to the violent merger of supermassive black holes, the kind of event that would send out a large ripple of gravitational waves. These waves in space-time are a consequence&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/physics\/walkaboutthegalaxy\/2015\/01\/close-black-holes-and-second-life\/\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Close Black Holes and Second Life<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astrophysics","category-episodes","excerpt","full-without-featured","even","excerpt-0"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Close Black Holes and Second Life - Walkabout the Galaxy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/physics\/walkaboutthegalaxy\/2015\/01\/close-black-holes-and-second-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Close Black Holes and Second Life - Walkabout the Galaxy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Josh, Addie and Tracy look ahead to the violent merger of supermassive black holes, the kind of event that would send out a large ripple of gravitational waves. 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