NASA Scientists Simulate Black Hole Collision

Krishna Dagli writes to tell us Yahoo! News is reporting that NASA scientists have managed to simulate the merger of two massive orbiting black holes. Using technology from Silicon Graphics, Inc. built from 20 SGI Altix systems the team was able to show how the resulting gravitational waves would interact with surrounding space.

Comments

How?

[squoozer]

I wasn't aware that we understood how one black hole worked so how can this team perform a simulation of two coming together and hope to get anything useful out? I admit there is an outside chance they will stumble on the correct result but can they prove it's correct?

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I wasn't aware that we understood how one black hole worked so how can this team perform a simulation of two coming together and hope to get anything useful out?

We have a pretty good idea. The equations being used to produce these simulations fit with observed evidence. About which, more:

> I admit there is an outside chance they will stumble on the correct result but can they prove it's correct?

See, this is the tricky part. We have a set of equations which look good mathematically. The equations fit with what we have observed so far, but we want to make more observations. Therefore, we have to apply the equations to a simulation, to give us an idea of what to look for. Then we look for this with our new instruments, and if we get something different, either our simulation or our equations are wrong, and then we go back and revisit them. It's not as simple as, "We understand black holes, now we simulate them, and then we look for evidence to confirm it." If we understood them so well, we wouldn't need the simulation! This is long science.