Fermi Saw Gamma Rays 0.4 Seconds Afterwards The Ligo Merger

Update: Nude Socialist quotes Avi Loeb of Harvard who said inwards a new preprint that the gamma rays may betoken that the merging twosome of dark holes could accept been twin babies within a mother's belly as well as the woman bring upwards was a real massive star alongside the weight about 100 Suns. I empathize alongside that.

Ted has informed us virtually a fascinating novel newspaper past times the Fermi gamma-ray telescope previously known equally Glast,

Fermi GBM Observations of LIGO Gravitational Wave number GW150914 (arXiv; NASA copy)

Some 0.4 seconds later the gravitational moving ridge from the dark hole merger detected equally gravitational waves inwards LIGO, Fermi saw a signal of gamma rays higher upwards \(50\keV\) alongside the imitation positive probability of 0.2%.




Note that 0.4 seconds is \(10^{-17}\) times 1.3 billion years. So if yous believe that the gamma-ray as well as gravitational-wave signals came from the same event, this represents a exam of the equality betwixt the speed of lite as well as the speed of gravitational waves whose relative precision is around \(10^{-17}\).

October twelfth as well as Dec 26th (8:21-11:46; 1:29-4:55, respectively) when LIGO made the other detections known to the TRF readers. Didn't Fermi observe some bursts at those moments equally well?

LIGO has brought us the powerfulness to necessitate heed the Universe simply the combination of hearing as well as seeing (in gamma rays, inwards this case) could brand the storey fifty-fifty to a greater extent than exciting.

See too Brian Koberlein's text inwards Forbes.