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Two Black Holes to Merge
An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers have discovered two supermassive black holes that they predict will eventually collide.
As they say in bad SF, 'it could warp the fabric of space.'"
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But what will it do to the continuum of time?
I thought they said 'May the force be with you' in really bad SF...
They might *think* they're doing the right thing, but they're young now. Let's just hope they sign a pre-nup.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
no one else is reporting that AOL-TW and Microsoft are going to merge.
Also, how much synergy between the black holes can be leveraged to deliver greater shareholder value?
Two giant black holes have been found at the center of a galaxy born from the joining of two smaller galaxies and are drifting toward a cataclysmic collision that will send ripples throughout the universe many millions of years from now, scientists said today.
or, we will have destroyed ourselves or a meteor will destroy us by the time we see this.
Eventually, those ripples will hit Earth's galaxy and cause infinitesimal wobbling in all matter, though it would be far too tiny to be noticed by humans.
Even if we do survive long enough to see it, we won't care
"This is the first time we have ever identified a binary black hole. This is the aftermath of two galaxies that collided sometime in the past."
So it is not enough that we might be sucked into one black hole, now we can be split apart by two.
In about four billion years, astronomers believe, the Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda galaxy will collide and merge, fusing their black holes into one.
So in addition to meteors, magnetic reversal, volcanos, and sunspot we know have to worry about another galaxies offing us.
The Sun is expected to blow up into a nova in three billion years, and perhaps then collapse to form a small black hole of its own, he said.
But this doesn't matter because our sun will suck in our burned remnants long before that.
Now, why is it that we are so optimistic?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
No, because the equivalent energy of the mass is released, and because the energy can't escape from the black hole, it might as well be counted as mass. I think. Or maybe not... perhaps you'd better just ask Hawking, cos he's made a career out of answering entirely pointless questions just like that one...
You have to appreciate astrophysicists' short-term excitement and long-term planning.
..." :)
"Two black holes are going to merge! Two black holes are going to merge!
Of course, we'll be watching this very carefully over the next one hundred million years
make this more apropo :)
Dark Helmet:"What the hell am I looking at?
When does this happen in the movie?"
ColonelSandurz: "Now. You're looking at now, sir.
Everything that happens now is happening now."
Dark Helmet: "What happened to then?"
Colonel Sandurz: "We passed it."
Dark Helmet: "When?"
Colonel Sandurz: "Just now. We're at now, now."
Dark Helmet: "Go back to then!"
Colonel Sandurz: "When?"
Dark Helmet: "Now!"
Colonel Sandurz: "Now?"
Dark Helmet: "Now!"
Colonel Sandurz:"We can't!"
Dark Helmet: "Why?"
Colonel Sandurz: "We missed it."
Dark Helmet: "When?"
Colonel Sandurz:"Just now."
Dark Helmet: "When will then be now?"
Colonel Sandurz: "Soon."
Dark Helmet: "How soon?"
Technician: "Sir!"
Dark Helmet: "What?!"
Technician: "We've identified their location!"
Dark Helmet: "Where?!"
Technician: "It's the moon of Vega."
Colonel Sandurz:"Good work. Set a course and prepare for our arrival!"
Dark Helmet: "When?!"
Technician: "Nineteen hundred hours, sir!"
Colonel Sandurz: "By high noon tomorrow they will be our prisoners!"
Dark Helmet: "WHO??!!"
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
The earth's sun will burn it self out long before the few hundred million years, so the question is do two black holes really collide if no one is there to watch them????