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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 remember reading a book, I think it was part of the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter, where the premise of the story was that every few hundred million years a collision like this killed all life in the entire galaxy through a massive release of radiation.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Yea, right. I have several billion electrons right here warping the fabric of space.
Who the hell thinks this crap up?
EVERYTHING WITH MASS WARPS SPACE. The more massive it is, the more it warps space. Black holes warp space so much it "tears," for lack of a better term. Two black holes combining into one huge black hole isn't going to do anything that they wouldn't do otherwise.
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))"
Keep in mind that the further out we look in space, the further into the past we are seeing. Since these black holes are 400 million light-years away, we are seeing them as they were 400 million years ago, and the researchers are predicting that they'll merge in a few hundred million years, which means they collided a hundred million years ago or so. Humans (or whatever species we evolve into) will most likely be extinct long before the light from the collision reaches us hundreds of millions of years from now.
"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
(Except that there's the weird possibility that the speed of gravity waves may not be equal to the speed of light. Gravity waves are what the article is presumably referring to when it talks about "warping the fabric of space". BTW, I don't even pretend to understand the "speed of gravity" debate, nor even am I equipped to assess whether it's a legitimate debate or fringe/crank science. I can't even sort out the terms that are used.)
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 black holes combining into one huge black hole isn't going to do anything that they wouldn't do otherwise. ...Except releasing gravity waves of strong enough magnitude to be detected from great distances.
Magnitude matters.
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...
Dr. Hasinger noted that humans on Earth would not have to worry about this galactic collision: they will not be around. 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.
Um. No. The Sun is not massive enough to "blow up into a nova" or to collapse into a black hole. It will, most likely, expand into a red giant (and swallowing Mercury, Venus, and maybe the Earth). Whatever is left after that will shrink into a white dwarf.
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????