What happens when two black holes get too close?
That is a very interesting question and it happens to be on the fore-front of modern Astrophysics and General Relativity.
If two bodies (stars, black holes, anything) get close enough to be gravitationally bound they will develop some sort of orbit in which the two bodies circle each other.
Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicts that when two very massive objects(like Black Holes and Neutron Stars) are caught in an orbit like this they will generate Gravitational Waves (Ripples in Space-Time). These Gravitational Waves carry energy away from the orbiting bodies which means that with each successive revolution they get closer to each other. Eventually the orbit gets so small that the two bodies merge.
The merger of two black holes entails a lot of complicated General Relativity and some non-intuitive physics, but theorists use large supercomputers to simulate such events. There are two primary results to these mergers of which we can be sure of:
1. A single, more massive black hole
2. An extremely powerful burst of gravitational waves
There are currently projects like LIGO which will attempt to directly detect the disturbances in space time caused by gravitational waves. They primarily expect to "see" the results of neutron star and black hole binary mergers.
There was also a recent discovery of a black hole merger in a distant galaxy though this was discovered by observing the jet streams caused by the black holes. You should note that those results are still preliminary and unconfirmed.
Still Curious?
Get More 'Curious?' with Our New PODCAST:
- Podcast? Subscribe? Tell me about the Ask an Astronomer Podcast
- Subscribe to our Podcast | Listen to our current Episode
- Cool! But I can't now. Send me a quick reminder now for later.
Related questions:
- How will the two black holes that are going to collide affect Earth?
- Have gravitational waves been proven to exist?
- What would happen if two stars collided?
- What would happen if there was a collision between two white dwarfs?
- Is time travel possible using merging black holes?
- What would happen if a supermassive black hole came close to the Earth?
- What happens when an antimatter black hole collides with a matter blackhole?
More questions about Black Holes and Quasars: Previous | Next
More questions about Stars: Previous | Next
How to ask a question:
If you have a follow-up question concerning the above subject, submit it here. If you have a question about another area of astronomy, find the topic you're interested in from the archive on our site menu, or go here for help.
Main Page | About Us | For Teachers | Astronomy Links | Ask a Question | View a Random Question | Our Podcast
URL: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=327
This page has been accessed 38046 times since October 21, 2002.
Last modified: December 12, 2002 3:43:48 PM
Ask an Astronomer is hosted by the Astronomy Department at Cornell University and is produced with PHP and MySQL.
Warning: Your browser is misbehaving! This page might look ugly. (Details)