On 16/02/2016 15:24, Yousuf Khan wrote:
The recent discovery of gravitational waves from the site of a merger of
two stellar mass black holes, may have been accompanied by a Gamma Ray
Burst event too! Why is this even news? Because the theory of black hole
mergers suggests that no form of light should be emitted, only energy in
the form of gravitational waves. If two neutron stars had merged into a
black hole, then sure, no problem there should be light emission, but
not from black holes. So possible new physics found?

Not necessarily new physics. The black holes were not sat in a perfect
vacuum and may still have had tenuous accretion disks or other material
in their respective equatorial planes some of which becomes up for grabs
when they merge. It would be surprising if the merger of BH ergospheres
did not provide some mechanism for pumping a fair amount of power out
along the polar axes of the newly formed object.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergosphere

http://www.caltech.edu/news/unusual-...e-merger-45188

Including but not limited to electromagnetic radiation and particle
creation. It is only the interior of the BH that is forbidden territory
- outside it is a region where things can still interact.

That might be the way to find it...comparing old surveys with new ones
and looking for something faint but with a new flat spectral index.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown