• Chais
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    1 year ago

    Well, space isn’t a perfect vacuum, is it? It’s pretty damn close, but you’ll still encounter the occasional hydrogen molecule.
    I mean, were talking about 1.7 seconds delay over a distance of 130 million lightyears! That’s virtually nothing.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In fact, this might be a good way to measure the average density of loose matter in the universe.

      • Fermion@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        And if we had enough ligos throughout the solar system, maybe we could even image dark matter distributions.

    • Treczoks@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It also depends on the starting point. If both the gravity wave and the light start in the middle of a star or even just inside a shell of an exploding star, or, in case of black holes, inside a cloud of matter that surrounds the hole waiting to be sucked in, there is more than enough matter to delay the light.

  • John_Hasler@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    They are not emitted simultaneously. The collision is messy. The GRB comes from leftover bits of neutron star.