LIGO and Virgo announce the detection of a black hole binary merger
One question I&#x27;ve had about gravitational wave detections that I haven&#x27;t yet been able to find an answer to is what is the mechanism by which the mass of an orbiting black hole pair converts its mass into a gravitational wave? Presumably the mass of the black holes is comprised of matter (in whatever form that may be) and kinetic energy. Is the gravitational wave energy while the two objects orbit purely a conversion of kinetic energy to gravitational wave energy or is some of the mass lost too? What about when they finally collide? If in this case 1 solar mass of matter was converted into gravitational energy then by what process?