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.

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This article and movie was featured in New Scientist on 4.18.06.

Black holes collide in the best simulation yet

18:29 18 April 2006
NewScientist.com news service

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Black holes distort space-time (yellow lines) and emit gravitational waves as they spiral towards each other (Image: Henze/NASA)

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Simulations of the ripples in space-time produced when two black holes merge could help astronomers interpret future gravitational wave observations (Image: Henze/NASA)

The ripples in space-time created when two black holes merge have been modelled to unprecedented accuracy, according to Einstein's equations, by a powerful new computer simulation. The "waveform" signatures produced in the simulation should help researchers identify the ripples in the data from gravitational wave detectors.

Powerful gravitational waves are thought to shake the fabric of space-time when two black holes spiral towards each other and eventually merge. The waves have not yet been observed, but researchers have been trying to simulate the process on computers in order to predict the expected signal. That will help the nascent searches now in progress.

The signals, called "waveforms", are shaped by factors such as the frequency at which the two black holes orbit each other, their relative masses and their spins. But modelling the merger has proven exceptionally difficult because the process is governed by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

"People have been trying for years to follow the coalescence of two black holes where you treat general relativity exactly," comments David Merritt, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, US.

John Baker of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US, agrees. "Part of the complexity of simulating Einstein's equations are the equations don't come in a unique form," he told New Scientist. "You have a lot of choices to make when you approach the problem." ...