How can gravitational waves dissipate the energy carried by them?

Question

I am not an expert on GR or gravitational waves but i have been reading about them and i wondered about where and how do these gravitational waves dump their energy? I read that the black hole collision detected by LIGO had energy equivalent to the mass of 3 solar masses in the form of gravitational waves. So, my question is where does this energy end up going?

Answer 1

The energy propagates circularly (if far enough like we are), and if it runs into some matter it interacts very weakly. We detected it because it transformed some amount (a very small part of its energy, that's why it was so hard to detect, people have tried for over 50 years, and only now have our detectors become sensitive enough) of its energy in moving, ever so slightly, the mirrors used in the detection apparatus, so it lost some energy. Without some energy transfer we would not have detected it ever. Equivalently, it shortened the distance traveled by the light in one leg, and increased it in the other leg of the interferometer used to detect the gravitational wave.