Space & Astronomy

What happens when two black holes collide ?

By T.K. Randall
January 11, 2015

Image: Black Hole - Large Magellanic Cloud
Credit: Alain r / CC BY-SA 2.5 (adapted) Despite the vast distances between galaxies it is inevitable that, sooner or later, some of them are going to run in to one another.

Astronomers have already had the opportunity to observe two galaxies in the process of merging following a collision, but the end result, which takes place after the supermassive black holes at the center of those galaxies smash together, has never been witnessed and remains something of a mystery.

Now scientists at Middlebury College in Vermont and the California Institute of Technology believe that they may have come up with a new theory to explain what happens.If they are correct then the end result of a collision between two supermassive black holes is an explosion unlike anything that has ever been witnessed before, an event of cataclysmic destruction that is the equivalent to 100 million supernovas going off simultaneously.

The explosion would be so great in fact that it would rip the galaxy apart and create ripples in the very fabric of space-time itself as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Those looking to witness such an event first-hand however will have a long wait - scientists believe that the supermassive black holes at the centers of the two merging galaxies being observed will not smash together for at least another one million years.

Source: CNET.com

Tags: Black Hole, Galaxy