The event that caused the recent, celebrated detection of gravitational waves involves some impressive numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW150914- Merger of a binary black hole, the two components 36 and 29 solar masses
- Just prior to merger, they were orbiting each other at a distance of 350 meters and a frequency of 75 Hz (i.e. the "year" was only about 12 milliseconds)
- At that time the relative tangential velocity of the two black holes was 60% of the speed of light
- The merger converted the equivalent of 3 solar masses of energy into gravitational waves
"During the final 20 milliseconds of the merger, the power of the radiated gravitational waves peaked at about 3.6×10^49 watts – 50 times greater than the combined power of all light radiated by all the stars in the observable universe"
After travelling for 1.3 billion years, the gravitational wave caused a 4km long LIGO baseline measurement to change by about one one-thousandth the diameter of a proton.
So yes, the Earth did move :)
Regards. Al
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