Gravitational Wave Sources May Be "Further" Than We Think

TL;DR

This paper discusses a theoretical approach to gravitational wave energy estimation using Lie symmetries, suggesting that wave energy diminishes with distance, which could impact detector sensitivity assessments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method based on approximate Lie symmetries to analyze gravitational wave energy content in cylindrical spacetimes.

Findings

Energy of gravitational waves decreases asymptotically as radial distance to the two-thirds power

Implications for revising gravitational wave detector sensitivity estimates

Proposes a self-damping mechanism for cylindrical gravitational waves

Abstract

It has been argued that the energy content in time varying spacetimes can be obtained by using the approximate Lie symmetries of the geodesics equations in that spacetime. When applied to cylindrical gravitational waves, it gives a self-damping of the waves. According to this proposal the energy of the waves go to zero asymptotically as the radial distance to the two-thirds power. If true, this would mean that the estimates for the sensitivity of the detectors for the various sources would have to be revised