Some Years After College (And After You Recover from Your

question 5

Multiple Choice

Some years after college (and after you recover from your astronomy class,) you get married and exchange gold rings with your sweetheart. What connection is there between the gold in those rings and recent observations of gravitational waves?

• A) gold atoms are only produced in supernova explosions, and all the gravitational wave events we have detected so far are from supernovae
• B) gold is so valuable (and so rare) because there it is only produced in the accretion disks of black holes, and most of it falls into the black hole
• C) our new understanding is that significant amounts of gold in the universe are produced in the mergers of neutron stars, which can be detected with gravitational waves
• D) gold is produced when two black holes merge, and most of the gravitational waves we have detected are from black hole mergers
• E) this is a misleading question; there is no connection whatsoever between gold and gravitational wave events

---

Definitions:

Absolute Value

A measure of a number's distance from zero, regardless of direction on the number line, represented by \(|x|\).

Set Notation

A symbolic way of representing and specifying a set and its elements using curly brackets and specific symbols.

Absolute Value Inequality

An inequality that contains an absolute value expression, setting constraints on the range of solutions.

Absolute Value Inequality

A mathematical statement that expresses the range of values an absolute value expression can take and still satisfy a given inequality.