# Are gravitational waves part of dark energy?

Do the current models of the universe consider the energy release of gravitational waves?

E.g. iirc, the last black hole merger detected had a gravitational wave energy equal to ~3 solar masses (hope I'm not mistaken in this fact).

Same for other mergers, and supernovae: the energy related to their gravitational waves should sum up to something.

• Interesting. But I suspect it is already accounted for by the baryonic term of mass. – Alchimista Mar 21 at 8:34
• Might, but i'm almost sure this is pure energy, not barionic one. – ShloEmi Mar 23 at 15:15
• In a merger, mass is involved. I have just made a drastic assumption, like "no mass no grav. waves". Like a kind of potential inherent to the baryonic mass present in the universe – Alchimista Mar 23 at 15:54
• Well, regarding pure energy (lol) it’s all an illusion, matter is energy and vice-versa, so I might be wrong, just curious if it was counted. – ShloEmi Mar 24 at 11:49
• You could try Physics SE. – Alchimista Mar 24 at 11:50

The green curve shows the estimated energy density from binary-black-hole mergers as a function of the frequency of the GWs; the red curve shows the contribution from binary-neutron-star mergers. The combined peak is always less than $$10^{-8}$$ of the critical energy density, so even summing up over frequencies, we have an energy density much smaller than that due to ordinary matter ($$\Omega \sim 5$$%), so it's probably safe to ignore its effects.