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In a galaxy far, far away, a pair of supermassive black holes appear to
be spiraling together toward a cosmic collision of unimaginable scale.
The final act of this mating dance, perhaps a mere million years from now, could release as much energy as 100 million of the violent supernova explosions in which stars end their lives, and wreck the galaxy it is in, said S. George Djorgovski of the California Institute of Technology.
Most of that energy would go into gravitational waves, the violent ripples of space-time that are predicted but not yet directly detected by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
If it holds up under scrutiny, the system could be a bonanza for the young field of gravitational wave astronomy. It would also provide a preview of what will happen in our own Milky Way galaxy in a few billion years when it collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, sending the black holes at the hearts of both galaxies into an “intimate (pre-arranged) companionship”.
Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/science/in-a-far-off-galaxy-2-black-holes-dance-toward-an-explosive-union.html&assetType=nyt_now&_r=1
Paper:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14143.html
This animation shows the expanding gravitational wave structure that would be expected to result from such a merger.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11086
The final act of this mating dance, perhaps a mere million years from now, could release as much energy as 100 million of the violent supernova explosions in which stars end their lives, and wreck the galaxy it is in, said S. George Djorgovski of the California Institute of Technology.
Most of that energy would go into gravitational waves, the violent ripples of space-time that are predicted but not yet directly detected by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
If it holds up under scrutiny, the system could be a bonanza for the young field of gravitational wave astronomy. It would also provide a preview of what will happen in our own Milky Way galaxy in a few billion years when it collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, sending the black holes at the hearts of both galaxies into an “intimate (pre-arranged) companionship”.
Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/science/in-a-far-off-galaxy-2-black-holes-dance-toward-an-explosive-union.html&assetType=nyt_now&_r=1
Paper:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14143.html
This animation shows the expanding gravitational wave structure that would be expected to result from such a merger.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11086
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