I Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves - real?

[Al_]

TL;DR Summary

Is gravitational lensing of gravitational waves a real thing? We hear discussion of the lensing of light, but would it also happen for gravitational waves? And how powerful could this be at it's strongest?

How powerful could this be at it's strongest, say, a supermassive black hole merger lensed by another nearby black hole?

Could the waves be powerful enough to be easily detected, or even to be seen directly if a human was there? What would they do to solid matter, bend or crack it?

 

[PeroK]

TL;DR Summary: Is gravitational lensing of gravitational waves a real thing?

Apparently so:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10773

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.02880

 

[FactChecker]

Since gravitational lensing is a result of the intermediate mass determining what the geodesic paths are (straight lines, shortest distances in spacetime), I would expect it to influence all physical entities.
As far as detection goes, we would need great directional accuracy in measuring gravitational waves to see it. The angles from lensing of light that we have seen are very small.

 

[sophiecentaur]

TL;DR Summary: Is gravitational lensing of gravitational waves a real thing? We hear discussion of the lensing of light, but would it also happen for gravitational waves? And how powerful could this be at it's strongest?

How powerful could this be at it's strongest, say, a supermassive black hole merger lensed by another nearby black hole?

You can't expect the sort of image resolution that you get with optical wavelengths. Optical telescopes can image lensing rings of the angular size of a few square seconds of arc but the wavelengths of gravitational waves are long and the 'aperture' of detectors is small in wavelengths and the signal to noise ratio is low so the resulting resolution is no better than a few degrees and often a lot wider.