I applaud the efforts of the authors of a recent TPT article,1 “Classroom Simulation of Gravitational Waves from Orbiting Binaries,” for their attempt to provide students and instructors who are not experts in general relativity with ways of visualizing how orbiting binaries (stars, black holes, neutron stars, and so on) emit gravitational waves. Unfortunately, the authors’ classroom simulation, like the visualizations of the LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave collaboration,2 is not faithful to the physics of gravitational waves as described by general relativity.3, 4 In particular, general relativity predicts that the gravitational wave power emitted by orbiting binaries is much larger in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the orbit than in directions in the plane of the orbit. Almost all visualizations of such gravitational waves show only waves moving in the plane of the orbit.
Even more important is the type of “vibration” induced by the gravitational...