Two Supermassive Black Holes About To Embrace

Taco Cowboy writes "NASA's WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) satellite was looking at a distant galaxy, some 3.8 billion light-years away, and saw something rather unusual. At first they thought that they saw a galaxy was forming new stars at a furious rate, but upon closer checking, they found that they were seeing two supermassive black holes spiraling closer and closer to each other. The dance of this black hole duo started out slowly, with the objects circling each other at a distance of about a few thousand light-years. As the black holes continued to spiral in toward each other, they were separated by just a few light-years. Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies typically shoot out pencil-straight jets, but in this case, the jet showed a zig-zag pattern. According to the scientists, a second massive black hole could, in essence, be pushing its weight around to change the shape of the other black hole's jet. Visible-light spectral data from the Gemini South telescope in Chile showed similar signs of abnormalities, thought to be the result of one black hole causing disk material surrounding the other black hole to clump. Together, these and other signs point to what is probably a fairly close-knit set of circling black holes, though the scientists can't say for sure how much distance separates them."

Comments

FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure you can use the term "about" to describe something that happened 3.8 billion years ago

Re:FSVO "about"

[Dunbal]

You're right - they probably already have!

Re:FSVO "about"

[Opportunist]

Did it really? I think that's a philosophical question. Personally, I think not only space and time but also cause and effect are relative to the spectator.

The light carrying the information that this is happening is just arriving here. The speed of light is also by definition the fastest information can travel. It may "in reality" have happened 3.8b years ago, but the effect can only now affect someone here. Even if you happened to have an observation post there and 3.8b years ago they noticed "hey, they're falling into each other NOW", and they sent that information right away, the information would not have reached us before the event since, well, the information of the event ITSELF is traveling at the speed of light, which, as stated before, is the fastest an information sent to us by the observation post could have traveled.

Long story short, the absolute moment in time when something happens does not matter as long as you cannot overcome its information propagation speed. It will of course change if someone happens to find a way to propagate information faster than the speed of light... which would open a completely different can of worms if you ask me (but that's beyond the scope of this post now).

What this all comes down to is that the absolute moment of some event does not matter, but only the relative moment that you receive the information.

Re:FSVO "about"

[geminidomino]

That's rather solipsistic, isn't it?

Re:FSVO "about"

[CapOblivious2010]

You're close - but the whole point of relativity is that there is no "absolute time". With one caveat (see below) It's ALL relative to the observer. There are some observers (specifically those roughly motionless with respect to the earth and the two black holes, like us) for whom "then" and "now" are separated by 3.8b years. There are (or could be) other observers (specifically those traveling at something close to the speed of light in along a line between the black holes and us) for whom the two events are separated by far less time. For someone traveling along that line at the speed of light, the two events would be simultaneous.

The only hard and fast rule is that space-time is divided into 3 zones:
* The absolute past - events within (or on the surface of) the light-cone leading up to here-and-now
* The absolute future - events within (or on the surface of) the light-cone starting at here-and-now
* Everything else - events in neither light cone, which means they cannot affect us and we cannot affect them. Depending on an observer's motion relative to us and such an event, someone might see the event as happening at the same time as the here-and-now, or before, or after. It doesn't matter, because such an event is not causally connected to the here-and-now in either direction.

The interesting thing is that the vast majority of the universe is in the "everything else" zone.... contemplate that one for a while...

Re: FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

It does when your wife says she's three month pregnant, and you were on a business trip three months ago.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Galactic Dominator]

but also cause and effect are relative to the spectator

Well I suppose facts and science are relative to a spectator...at least until they try to replicate them.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Even more interesting, the observable universe may in fact be almost infinitely small relative to the rest of the universe if inflation theory is correct.

Re:FSVO "about"

[cusco]

The speed of light is also by definition the fastest information can travel if that information is carried by light. If the information is carried by some other method, such as sound waves, then the speed of sound is the fastest it can travel. Remember, we can't even measure around 90 percent of the mass and energy in this universe yet. I would be very surprised if we don't eventually find something faster than light, at which point that will be your new speed limit.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Sardaukar86]

The speed of light is also by definition the fastest information can travel.

No, it's not.

Sorry, Opportunist, it looks like this eloquent and reasoned rebuttal has not only completely defeated your argument but also dealt a death blow to that silly Special Relativity baloney.

Re:FSVO "about"

[timeOday]

It's unobservable to humans on a whole 'nother dimension anyways - duration. I don't think anything on this scale can change noticeably during our paltry lifetimes.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

You're close - but the whole point of relativity is that there is no "absolute time".

No, that's not true at all.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation theory doesn't say whether the universe is infinite or not, it is just potentially compatible with both an infinite and a finite universe.

Re:FSVO "about"

[VortexCortex]

The speed of light is also by definition the fastest information can travel.

We once thought the sound barrier was unbreakable. So far no matter can travel through space faster than light, but that won't stop us from using relativity to change the definition of travel. There is a horizon beyond which we can not currently see -- Galaxies are travelling away from us faster than the speed of light from them can reach us. Aren't they traveling faster than light? Oh, that's expansion... So, if it's space that's moving then the matter doesn't have to travel through space to achieve faster than light speeds.

Of course, since you're being metaphysical, I suppose one could argue that since information is made of matter that even if FTL drives enable us to reach our destination before light would it doesn't mean that our meanings mean the same things once we do so -- The information mightn't really travel with us, it'll be different by definition when it gets there due to entropy.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Neil Boekend]

Assuming that our current understanding of physics is correct, there is nothing that can travel beyond the speed of light through space-time.

That does leave us with some loopholes.
1. Our understanding of physics could be incomplete. There is much yet to discover, so this may be the case. However, the current models are verified extremely precisely.
2. Warp drives. Not traveling through space-time but morphing it would help. However this seems to require massive amounts of energy. I believe the last calculations said: about the mass of Jupiter.
3. Subspace. Not traveling through space-time but through something else would help. However we have no reason to believe there is a realm outside space-time, let alone get there, let alone survive there.
4. ...
5. Profit.

Re:FSVO "about"

[wonkey_monkey]

Yes, it is.

(well, if you don't have to provide any evidence, nor do I).

Re: FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Then, if we do somehow happen upon some piece of information faster than the speed of light, we'd be able interpolate our model of the universe to another degree.

Re:FSVO "about"

[blue trane]

Regarding point 3 "we have no reason to believe...", that same argument was used against black holes once. From http://greekgeek.hubpages.com/hub/Real-Photos-of-Black-Holes:

Einstein himself thought they were "too strange to be real."

"When I was a PhD student, people used to giggle when you hear[d] about black holes. They're like unicorns, mythical creatures. We call this the 'giggle factor.' People would say, 'Beam me up, Scotty.' Well, no one is laughing anymore."

~ Dr. Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist, on How the Universe Works.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Your.Master]

Not necessarily, it's just relativistic. It's hard to break out of an absolutist mindset, but there isn't really a sensible way to say that the black hole is there at all without invoking a set of physics that outright demands you think relatively. Remember, we're actually observing phenomena which is consistent with a physics model that is rooted in relativity, not downloading absolute knowledge of the existence of black holes at this location in spacetime.

The entire population of earth is essentially in the same observation "moment" in time relative to this black hole, though.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Sockatume]

Less than 3.8 billion years ago - space is expanding.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Your.Master]

No, it's entirely true. Just look up the definition of relativity -- even just the word itself, not the physics term. It literally means the absence of absolutes -- in this case, space and time.

A consequence of relativity is that Alice and Bob can disagree on which came first: event C or event D, and both can be correct and both correctly think the other guy is incorrect, because each exists in a realm where their event actually did come first. Despite inhabiting the same universe.

This said, we think that C cannot cause D, nor D cause C, if there's any disagreement between Alice and Bob about which one came first. Only when one event precedes the other for all observers can the one possibly be the cause of the other.

Some of this gets trickier still when you look at some variations of the double slit experiment, eg. the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment, where an effect appears to precede a cause (alas, not in a way that lets us send a message to the past).

Re:FSVO "about"

[michelcolman]

Galaxies are travelling away from us faster than the speed of light from them can reach us. Aren't they traveling faster than light? Oh, that's expansion... So, if it's space that's moving then the matter doesn't have to travel through space to achieve faster than light speeds.

That's just the result of a weird (put pragmatically practical) definition of space-time coordinates called "co-moving coordinates".

According to the "normal" rules of special relativity, the speed of light relative to us is the same everywhere, there's no such thing as "space itself expanding", and nothing goes faster than light. However, using those same definitions, we are the oldest part of the universe (using our reference system), all distant galaxies moving away from us at high speed are aging more slowly, everything gets more distance-contracted further out, and at a distance equal to the speed of light times the age of the universe, the big bang is only just beginning and time is standing still. Not just because we have to wait for the light to get here, but "right now", correcting for the travel time of light. It's just a result of relativistic time and distance contractions. Other civilisations out there will use themselves as the reference point and will have a similar view centered around them. In fact, we may say that they don't exist yet while they say we don't exist yet and both are correct from their point of view.

However, since that's not a very practical and certainly not an objective model (no matter how correct it is), cosmologists decided to use a different coordinate system. A meter anywhere in the universe is defined as what's measured by a one meter stick that is moving together with the rest of the expanding universe (undoing distance contraction), and time is defined to be the time indicated by local clocks that are also traveling together with the expanding universe (undoing time contraction). The effect is that with this coordinate system, the universe is nicely homogenous, the same age everywhere, truly infinite, and there's no longer anything special about our location.

The downside is that the speed of light is now relative to the local "expanding space", and this space can exand more quickly than the speed of light. There's nothing physical about this "space", it's just a mathematical artefact resulting from the coordinate system we chose.

Very distant objects that exist "now" in the second model, will never be visible to us because their light is trying to get to us on a kind of cosmic conveyor belt moving the other way more rapidly. In the first model, those objects don't exist yet and never will because local time has slowed down to an asymptotic halt. The definition of "now" is just "the collection of events that we happen to have assigned the same time coordinate to", and this depends entirely on the choice of coordinates. There's no such thing as an objective "now". But no matter what coordinates you use, we all agree that we will never see those objects.

Both point of view are "correct", we are just measuring things a bit differently but all conclusions are the same. And no matter what model you use, nothing can ever overtake an actual photon in vacuum. Something at a distance may move faster than a photon here, but that just depends on how we define "time", "distance" and "speed". Nothing actually goes faster than a ray of light at the same location.

Re:FSVO "about"

[michelcolman]

Well, time does slow down in the vicinity of a black hole, so they may still be "just about" to embrace, and forever will be from our point of view. Depending on what coordinate system you use, of course.

We can never actually see something cross the event horizon of a black hole, objects will always slow down to a halt before the event horizon (even though from the point of view of the object itself, time continues normally and it crosses the boundary in a finite amount of time). I expect the same is true for black holes collapsing into each other. The whole thing will just appear to freeze.

Re:FSVO "about"

[ByteSlicer]

The interesting thing is that the vast majority of the universe is in the "everything else" zone.... contemplate that one for a while...

Hmm, I don't think this is correct, depending on what you mean exactly.

When we talk about the universe, we usually mean the observable universe. Since we receive light from all parts of the observable universe (it's observable after all), that means we are in the future light cones of those locations (each roughly an expanding sphere in 3D+time). If we can see something, it can effect us.

But, not all of those places are in our future light cone. Because of the metric expansion of space, which causes accelerated growth of the universe, our sun's light will never reach the outer regions of the observable universe, and we will never be able to travel there unless we find some way around the restrictions of general relativity (unlikely).

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting, perhaps, that Stupid travels faster than light? You may have a point.

Re:FSVO "about"

[digitig]

It's not by definition the fastest information can travel. It's the fastest according to our current understanding, which might be wrong.. The OP confused a priori with a posteriori truth -- logical certainty with scientific confidence.

Re: FSVO "about"

[digitig]

It does when your wife says she's three month pregnant, and you were on a business trip three months ago.

Good job she came with me, so I didn't have to calculate the relativistic effect of only one of us making the journey.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look up the definition of relativity -- even just the word itself, not the physics term. It literally means the absence of absolutes -- in this case, space and time.

Please don't encourage the etymological fallacy with jargon words. While it sucks so many fields will re-purpose common words for jargon, it relying on the common meaning for more exact answers related to jargon usage will get you in trouble. While it is true special and general relativity lack absolute time, the older Galilean relativity on the other hand includes absolute space and universal time.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure only Bad News travels faster than light.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think his full argument is: "No, its not. U R gay"

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a rather big difference between views of the light speed barrier now and the sound barrier in the past. By the 20th century, we were already well aware that artillery and firearms could fire supersonic projectile, and before supersonic manned flight, we had self-propelled rockets that could travel faster than sound (V2s traveled quite a bit faster). It was a question of engineering,The question was if a plane holding a person could be built strong enough and actually be controllable at such speeds (based on control problems with older planes approaching the sound barrier). That was a matter of engineering challenge. With the idea of warp drive, we still don't have any hint that it isn't barred by fundamental physical processes still. Even if you ignore the need for a yet unseen form of matter/way to manipulate space-time, there are issues like the radiation from the bubble going nuts when you exceed faster than light movement with it that may limit it to sublight speeds only (still would be really cool then). Not to mention its own share of engineering issues too, like the bubble being uncontrollable/unreachable from the inside, so you would need some slower than light control on the outside making it more like a railroad.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, if he argues with you, he has to take a contrary position.

Re:FSVO "about"

[geminidomino]

I've never been able to wrap my brain around it, probably because of the aforementioned "absolutist" mindset.

I can see how an event being outside of any real sphere of effect makes it irrelevant to us for 3.8 billion years, but saying it didn't happen until it's been observed happening just sounds like an internet troll to me.

Re:FSVO "about"

[CapOblivious2010]

I mean the total universe, not just the observable universe.

The universe is 14b years old; let's assume it continues for another 14b years. Ignore expansion for now, and we can conclude that it must be at least 14b light-years across because we can see almost back to the big bang. In a 2D space-time diagram (1 space dim + 1 time) you'd see a square with an X in it - we're at the center, the absolute past is below us, the absolute future is above us, and the "neither past nor future" (let's call this the "elsewhen") is to the sides. Clearly half of this "universe" is in the elsewhen.

Now make it a 3D space-time diagram (2 space dims + 1 time): the diagram is a cylinder and the light-cones are normal geometric cones. But this means the volume of the absolute past + future is less than half of the cylinder, leaving more than half for the elsewhen. Add in the 3rd space dim, and there's an even smaller proportion inside the "hyper-cones" and thus even more outside.

Now if the universe if really more than 14b LY years across (which it almost certainly is - some estimates are hundreds of billions of LY, some much more), there's even more space-time in the elsewhen.

And because it's expanding, then the "hyper-cylinder" flares out as you move from past to future, resulting in yet still more space-time in the elsewhen.

So ultimately a very tiny fraction of all of space-time is in our absolute past, and a very time fraction is in our absolute future, meaning the vast majority is in the elsewhen.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Hatta]

Everything else - events in neither light cone, which means they cannot affect us and we cannot affect them.

It will affect us eventually, when both light cones get large enough to intersect. That is, unless they are far enough away that the expansion of the universe outpaces the growth of the light cone.

Depending on an observer's motion relative to us and such an event, someone might see the event as happening at the same time as the here-and-now, or before, or after.

Wouldn't such an observer be moving faster than the speed of light?

Re:FSVO "about"

[nitehawk214]

Inflation theory doesn't say whether the universe is infinite or not, it is just potentially compatible with both an infinite and a finite universe.

I suppose that is why GP said "almost infinitely", which really is a terribly meaningless and confusing phrase when you think about it.

Re:FSVO "about"

[nitehawk214]

Look, if he argues with you, he has to take a contrary position.

Yes, but that's not just saying "No it isn't".

Re:FSVO "about"

[CapOblivious2010]

It will affect us eventually, when both light cones get large enough to intersect. That is, unless they are far enough away that the expansion of the universe outpaces the growth of the light cone

Sure, but that's not the point - relativity talks about "events" which are particular points in space and in time. You're treating "us" as a point in space but a line in time.

Wouldn't such an observer be moving faster than the speed of light?

Nope - that's the whole point. Relativity is actually pretty simple (special relativity, anyway), but you have to get past a couple of things, and one of the biggies is that space and time don't work the way you think they do. Your "common sense" has jumped to unwarranted conclusions based on severely limited experience, and until you can let that go you'll struggle to fit relativity into a worldview that it doesn't fit in.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Hatta]

We're still talking about two events that are outside of each others light cones. In order for an observer to observe both events at all, let alone ascribe them an order in time, he'd have to be travelling faster than the speed of light.

I'm quite aware of how special relativity works, thank you.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is!

Re:FSVO "about"

[CapOblivious2010]

We're still talking about two events that are outside of each others light cones. In order for an observer to observe both events at all, let alone ascribe them an order in time, he'd have to be travelling faster than the speed of light.

No, the observer just needs to be situated so that both events are in his past light cone. That's completely independent of whether they're in each other's past or future light cones.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

Re:FSVO "about"

[cyn1c77]

Did it really? I think that's a philosophical question. Personally, I think not only space and time but also cause and effect are relative to the spectator.

The light carrying the information that this is happening is just arriving here. The speed of light is also by definition the fastest information can travel. It may "in reality" have happened 3.8b years ago, but the effect can only now affect someone here. Even if you happened to have an observation post there and 3.8b years ago they noticed "hey, they're falling into each other NOW", and they sent that information right away, the information would not have reached us before the event since, well, the information of the event ITSELF is traveling at the speed of light, which, as stated before, is the fastest an information sent to us by the observation post could have traveled.

Long story short, the absolute moment in time when something happens does not matter as long as you cannot overcome its information propagation speed. It will of course change if someone happens to find a way to propagate information faster than the speed of light... which would open a completely different can of worms if you ask me (but that's beyond the scope of this post now).

What this all comes down to is that the absolute moment of some event does not matter, but only the relative moment that you receive the information.

You're making the issue more complicated than it really is. (Perhaps you are also a cosmologist!)

Fact 1: Our current understanding of physics implies that this event happened 3.8 billion years ago.

Fact 2: In colloquial English, "About to" indicates that the preceeding action is imminent.

Given that "about to" indicates a future action and this event happened in the past, the title is either (a) illogical, (b) inconsistent with the English language, or (c) not consistent with our current understanding of physics.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

M: Look, I CAME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT, I'm not going to just stand...!!
Q: OH, oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse.
M: Oh, I see, well, that explains it.
Q: Ah yes, you want room 12A, Just along the corridor.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Jeremy Erwin]

wikipedia notes that
Special Relativity

is based on two postulates: (1) that the laws of physics are invariant (i.e., identical) in all inertial systems (non-accelerating frames of reference); and (2) that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of the light source.

som nice juicy a priori truths for you.

The absolute speed limit (for particles with positive rest mass) is a consequence of special relativity.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Neil Boekend]

I didn't say there wasn't one. I just said we have no reason to believe there is one. That is a cold, hard fact.
At this point it is like a god. No one can prove that he exists and no one can prove that he doesn't exist. We once logically assumed that the universe was created by a god. Any other cause was more complex with the information we had. Nowadays we know more. Much more.
In the same way we should assume now that there is no subspace. That doesn't mean that we should hold to this assumption when experiments indicate that there is a subspace.

Re:FSVO "about"

[amRadioHed]

But there was reason to believe in black holes. There was no reason to believe an object with an escape velocity faster than the speed of light couldn't exist. They were strange but they solved a very simple problem. Subspace on the other hand is just wishful thinking for those who want to think FTL travel will someday be possible. There is no reason to believe it might or even should exist based on anything we know about the universe.

Re:FSVO "about"

[digitig]

I don't think you understand what "a priori" means in the theory of knowledge. And it looks as if you don't understand how science works, either. Try reading some Kant.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Archangel Michael]

Sorry, Stupid seems more like Black Holes rather than anything based on the speed of light. With stupid, you send information in, and nothing much of value escapes; a black hole.

Re:FSVO "about"

[amRadioHed]

The sound barrier was not the same at all. We knew of things going faster than sound, we just didn't think we could engineer a machine that could survive the stress of breaking the sound barrier. It's like building a fusion reactor, we know in theory it's possible but some people believe the engineering challenges are too great to overcome. The speed of light is different. We know of nothing that goes faster than light, and all the evidence we have supports this theory that nothing can go faster.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Hatta]

Ah, that's a very good point. Thanks.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Long story short, the absolute moment in time when something happens does not matter as long as you cannot overcome its information propagation speed.

Yeah, because whether or not the victim of a homicide died before or after the suspect arrived at their home doesn't matter because it takes several days for anyone to learn that the victim is dead...

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

About 10% less. At a comoving distance of about 3.8 billion light years, the light traveled about 3.4 billion years to get to us in our frame.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Jeremy Erwin]

And it looks as if you don't understand how science works, either

I may not know enough about Kant to fully understand why Kantians were challenged by Relativity theory, but I do know that the philosophy of science is an unsettled field. Perhaps the best way to understand science is to do science, and not simply argue whether "a priori" and "a posteriori" are adequate containers for human knowledge.

On the other hand, you are correct, and I was in the wrong-- to the extent that the "invariance of light" relies on experimental data, it is a posteriori.

Re:FSVO "about"

[MondoGordo]

It may "in reality" have happened 3.8b years ago

then wouldn't it be more correct to say that we're about to witness an event that probably happened about 3.8 billion years ago rather than suggesting the event is about to happen 3.8 billion light years away? Since that is the reality of the situation ?

Re:FSVO "about"

[Bengie]

I thought the speed of light is the fastest information can travel through space, but not to say there aren't shortcuts to using space.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Bengie]

At some point in the past, I brought up a question in a physics forum used by college, graduate, and PHDs. I asked if a blackhole had a radius greater than 1 light second, and something fell past the event horizon, wouldn't the object be moving fast as light after 1 seconds given that acceleration at the even horizon is c/s^2? Several people responded saying it doesn't matter because it's not proper acceleration, so the same restrictions do not apply. Either I got massively trolled or it seems to be common acceptance that faster than light speeds can happen to space itself, just not to objects moving through space.

Re:FSVO "about"

[cusco]

The fastest thing currently known. Nothing says that there isn't something faster that we currently can't detect. A century and a half ago we couldn't detect ultraviolet light or cosmic rays, and half a century ago we weren't even sure that neutrinos actually existed.

Re:FSVO "about"

[cusco]

Most of the theories that attempt to unify quantum and relativistic space assume multiple (7 to 25) additional dimensions that we currently can't detect and for which we have only the most vague of descriptions. Light is the fastest phenomena in the space/time that we know, nothing says that there can't be something faster that we currently can't detect.

Re:FSVO "about"

[blue trane]

Well there is entanglement.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

That is nice, but doesn't say what the absolute speed limit on information is unless you make some additional assumptions about causality and/or the speed of other long range effects other than electromagnetism.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

From what frame though? From the frame of an outside observer, the in falling velocity goes to zero at the event horizon. To an infalling observer, they will reach the singularity in a time less than they would expect from the speed of light if they used the dimensions measured at infinity. E.g. for a billion sun blackhole, the radius of the event horizon would seem to be 2.5 light hours but it takes ~10 minutes to go from the event horizon to the singularity. But the observer infalling would also be seeing a contracted distance, so they are still approaching the singularity at less than c in their own frame.

It would be a lot like traveling to a near by star at near the speed of light. To an observer on earth, it looks like someone at 80% of the speed of light took 5 years to travel 4 light years. To someone on the ship, it looks like it only took them 3 years. If the observer on the ship used their prior knowledge that the star was 4 light years away as measured on Earth, they would conclude they went faster than the speed of light. But if they remeasured that distance at the start of their journey once at speed, they would get 2.4 light years, and conclude they are approaching the star at the same rate as the observer on Earth says.

Re:FSVO "about"

[wonkey_monkey]

The whole thing will just appear to freeze.

Doesn't it also become unobservable at the same time? Err, when I say time, I mean... uh...

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Except entanglement doesn't allow FTL travel or even FTL communication. It is possible that quantum mechanics is fundamentally wrong, and that the replacement theory's explanation of entanglement allows for practical FTL uses, but that is back to the "no evidence suggesting yet" category.

Re:FSVO "about"

[bbsalem]

But the light travel time makes the events upcoming in our time. We see objects at different times in their history according to their distance in light years, so Capella is 45 light years away, we see it as it was that long ago tonight. Even the Sun we see is as it was 8 minutes ago. It could have exploded that long ago and we would find out only now.

Seriously, what the light is telling us is that we are about to witness the effects of two supermassive black holes merging. Physics suggests that we should see effects that test our basic understanding, such as such an event might reveal the graviton, the boson for the gravity fource, by creating ripples in spacetime. The article says that this would affect pulsars, but does spell out how/ Maybe waves in spacetime passing a pulsar would change its pulse frequency in some way predicted by models for gravatational waves, if they are caused by this event.

Of course, even the inference that the emissions are caused by merging black holes is not absolutely certain, there could be some other explanation, but you and I may not be able to get at the critical tests because the journal article may be behind a paywall and even if we were current on the science we may never be able to read the arguments for and against unless we pay for it. Usually the abstract is free, but the article itself is protected by journal copyright and if we really wanted to know the argument, which is the critical part of any science, we may not be able to get to it.

Re:FSVO "about"

[blue trane]

I thought we were talking about subspace, the subject of the article?

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

From the point of view of relativity, absolute time would be proceeding much more slowly in the vicinity of a cluster of black holes swirling around each other. Because of the enormous speeds involved (a significant % of c in a vacuum) as enormous gravitational centres attract each other, we can think of the same analogy Einstein used whereby a ship travelling at c would return to an earth that has aged tremendously more. So in absolute terms, we won't be getting any incite into this phenomenon than we already have?

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

From the point of view of relativity, absolute time would be proceeding much more slowly in the vicinity of a cluster of black holes swirling around each other.

As far as special and general relativity, there is no absolute time. Time near black holes would appear slower relative to someone further away from those black holes, but also depends on how fast the distant observer is going and what gravitational bodies they are next to.

Because of the enormous speeds involved (a significant % of c in a vacuum) as enormous gravitational centres attract each other,

Time slowing down near black holes doesn't have to do with speeds involved, but because general relativity introduces effects from gravity, and simply being closer to a gravitational well than another observer will slow your time down relative to them. If you are going relativistic speeds on top of that, then it would slow down even more, but the two effects are independent in a sense, that they can exist without the other.

So in absolute terms, we won't be getting any incite into this phenomenon than we already have?

Many things still happen in a finite amount of time, some in very short amounts of time, so even far away they could still be observable to some degree.

Re:FSVO "about"

[RockDoctor]

The absolute speed limit (for particles with positive rest mass) is a consequence of special relativity.

Nope ; it's a consequence of Maxwell's laws of Electro-Magnetism. But most people didn't believe that part of Maxwell until (1) Fizeau and his experiments on the speed of light in different moving media, followed by (2) Lorentz's explanation of Fizeau's (and Michelson-Morley's) results in terms of contractions of space and/or time following motion with respect to the "luminiferous ether" ; then in 1905 (3) Einstein published his paper on "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" - in which he set out Special Relativity as a consequence of actually accepting Maxwell's predictions as being true.

Your cart and your horse are in the wrong temporal and/ or physical orientations with respect to each other, such that from the real worlds reference frame the cart is preceding the horse. I'm afraid that I don't have the maths to work out how they are oriented from your reference frame, or indeed if that is a reference frame which I can physically achieve.

Re:FSVO "about"

[RockDoctor]

but there isn't really a sensible way to say that the black hole is there at all without invoking a set of physics that outright demands you think relatively

People were making self-consistent speculations about the physics of black holes before 1800. There weren't many of them, and they didn't spend much time (or ink) on it. But the idea does date back that far. Not as subtly as our GR and QM models, but it is an idea of considerable age.

Re:FSVO "about"

[RockDoctor]

GP said "almost infinitely", which really is a terribly meaningless and confusing phrase when you think about it.

DON'T DO THAT!

Think about what happened to Georg Cantor as a result of thinking too seriously about infinity.

Re:FSVO "about"

[RockDoctor]

I mean the total universe, not just the observable universe.

The universe is 14b years old;

The portion of the universe which can be observed from our location in space time has a (almost) homogeneous state, the so called hydrogen re-combination event, about 13.7 Gyr ago. What happened outside that light cone is less certain, and there are hints in the WMAP data set (soon to be updated! Be excited, very excited!) that in some directions the events outside our light cone were not the same as in other directions.

If you're comparing the total and observable universes, you've got to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

I haven't checked cosmogony recently, but I was really attracted by Turok and Steinhardt's ekpyrotic model, and I don't think that it's been shown impossible. Yet. Maybe with the release of the next tranche of WMAP data.

Re:FSVO "about"

[sFurbo]

The problem is that moving information faster than the speed of light in a relativistic universe is equivalent to having an effect precede its cause, i.e. breaking causality. Or, more succinctly, {causality, relativity, FTL}, pick two.

Re:FSVO "about"

[Anonymous Coward]

Subspace is as off-topic to the article as quantum entanglement. Either learn the subject, or troll harder.

Re:FSVO "about"

[ubrgeek]

Like the state of a particle isn't set until it's observed? (Question, not a snarky remark).

Re:FSVO "about"

[nitehawk214]

GP said "almost infinitely", which really is a terribly meaningless and confusing phrase when you think about it.

DON'T DO THAT!

Think about what happened to Georg Cantor as a result of thinking too seriously about infinity.

Will I go insane if I think about someone thinking about infinity?

Re:FSVO "about"

[Jeremy Erwin]

Thanks.

Re:FSVO "about"

[blue trane]

What about this sentence in a post I was responding to?

Subspace on the other hand is just wishful thinking for those who want to think FTL travel will someday be possible.

Old news

[caseih]

Happened over two billion years ago and we're just hearing about it now!? Typical.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Happened over two billion years ago and we're just hearing about it now!? Typical.

You're reaching if you're looking for a laugh.

Ba dum dum...tissss...

Re:Old news

[Dunbal]

oblig: "Well the thing about black holes, you see, is that they're black. And the thing about space is - that it's black..."

Re:Old news

[tgd]

Happened over two billion years ago and we're just hearing about it now!? Typical.

Its Slashdot ... You'll hear about it next week, too!

Re:Old news

[Opportunist]

Quite a period for a binary star.

Re: Old news

[todrules]

So you had to go and play the race card didn't ya?

Re: Old news

[Dunbal]

Er, Red Dwarf. Nerd card revoked.

Re:Old news

[thegarbz]

On the upside in this case slashdot was only 0.000000000001% slower than every other news outlet. Surely this is a new speed record.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Obama!

Re: Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

That "Red Dwarf" bullshit is an obvious racial slur against the Injuns! And don't get me started on the "Brown Dwarf" thing!

Did not read article yet, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So.. if they observed these black holes at a few thousand light years apart, and then some time later (assuming less than a few thousand years later) at just a few light years apart... does this mean that they are moving toward each other at faster than the speed of light?

Re:Did not read article yet, but...

[Dunbal]

Either that or distance is being seriously compressed!

Re:Did not read article yet, but...

[CastrTroy]

I thought the exact same thing. Seems like there's some kind of contradiction. Even if they were both moving at the speed of light, toward each other it would still take many centuries for them to collide.

Re: Did not read article yet, but...

[todrules]

FTA, it was more of a generalization on 2 black holes collapsing. It wasn't talking about anything specific in this case.

Re:Did not read article yet, but...

[ls671]

Or the black holes, due to gravitational forces affecting each other, grow in size at a rate than looks faster than the speed of light thus making them look closer.

Whatever it is, I heard that the space time continuum is affected in areas where black holes are present. It might then be hard to "see" what is really happening. The links in the summary state they aren't sure about what is going on yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

Re:Did not read article yet, but...

[wonkey_monkey]

if they observed these black holes at a few thousand light years apart, and then some time later (assuming less than a few thousand years later) at just a few light years apart...

That's a big "if." A casual reading of the summary might lead you to infer it, but it's more likely something they've extrapolated from the current observations.

Re:Did not read article yet, but...

[bigfinger76]

Black Hole A leaves the station at noon, travelling at the speed of light. Black Hole B leaves.... I was never good at those.

Re:Did not read article yet, but...

[michelcolman]

They didn't actually observe the black holes spiraling towards each other. They're just looking at an image with strangely shaped jets and have come to the logical conclusion that this is what probably happened during the many thousands of years preceding the event we're witnessing now.

Re:Did not read article yet, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the event horizon to grow at a rate faster than c, the black hole would have to experience an influx of matter at a rate of a 100,000 solar masses a second, and to maintain that for a day or so would mean approaching the mass of a galaxy crammed in there for something about the same size as one of the outer planet's orbits. The record here has nothing directly to do with time dilation near a black hole (which is similar to Earth's surface too, just a lot stronger), but that there is a long jet of gas that leaves a trace of how the black holes moved and change the direction of their rotation.

If they where thousands of light years apart...

[TheSimkin]

Then won't it take them thousands of years to close the gap? What am I missing here?

Re:If they where thousands of light years apart...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where I'm confused. Seems they're saying that they're moving faster than the speed of light toward each other.. unless we've somehow been observing them much longer than we've had telescopes.

Re:If they where thousands of light years apart...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're looking at the wavy motion in the jet they put out - which is apparently showing a history of their interaction.

Re:If they where thousands of light years apart...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neat.

Re:If they where thousands of light years apart...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing some Austin Powers

Re:If they where thousands of light years apart...

[wonkey_monkey]

To quote todrules:

FTA, it was more of a generalization on 2 black holes collapsing. It wasn't talking about anything specific in this case.

Really?

[Frosty Piss]

Two Supermassive Black Holes About To Embrace

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Black Holes, not assholes.

Re:Really?

[Uncle Mark (AUS)]

Black Holes, not assholes.

Black Assholes

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Jones is about to hug Oprah Winfrey?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was literally (not exaggerating) what I came to the posts to find. Kanye and Kim were the first things that popped into my head with that headline. I would also have accepted J-Lo and Pit bull . Was not disappointed.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you mean the original TV Batman, and some blue-faced chick that Picard banged once?

I can see the possible relevance of the latter, but are you saying Batman needs to step away from the buffet line?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Black Holes, not assholes.

Black Assholes

I did not know that Cardassians are African American. Heck they aren't even human.

Re:Really?

[RivenAleem]

Not touching that with a 1000 light-year pole.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was Kirk who banged the colored* chicks.

* That's colored as in blue or green - not as in "derogatory for black"

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless, they are too far away to give a shit about and have no effect on my life. Those assholes, the black holes. whatever.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't get it for a good 3.8b years

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They made you waste 30 seconds to make that comment, possibly more if you spent any time reading posts.

Gravitational Waves

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the countless galaxies, each with its own supermassive black hole, just like intersecting waves, the gravitational waves could theoretically act like waves in the electromagnetic spectrum, or classical physics experiments with waves. Some waves would cancel, others would be much larger than the 2 source standing waves, and thus would appear as a stronger signal to a gravitational wave detector, given said detector was sensitive enough.

Gravitational waves could also bring us closer to the point in time of the "big bang" than the cosmic microwave background radiation images. I sincerely hope this discovery, gives solid reason to develop said gravitational wave detector. Kudo's to the NASA WISE team!

Re:Gravitational Waves

[Anonymous Coward]

Now onwards to waiting the launch of the detector! Wasn't it few years from launch?

Re:Gravitational Waves

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the countless galaxies, each with its own supermassive black hole [...] would appear as a stronger signal to a gravitational wave detector

Unfortunately, a black hole by itself doesn't produce any gravitational waves. (It's symmetric, and you need a changing asymmetry, like two orbiting black holes, to produce gravitational waves.) But, you've otherwise got a good idea: researchers are deliberately looking for what they call a "stochastic background" from lots and lots of pairs of orbiting black holes, which should combine to produce a continuous signal from all over the sky.

Re:Gravitational Waves

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean LISA, a planned network of satellites monitoring the distances between them in order to detect the distortions caused by gravitational waves? That's the wrong detector for this case. Let me explain:

Gravitational waves, like all waves, have a period: the time taken for one complete wave to pass by. This period matches the characteristic period of the thing that produces them. An irregular neutron star which spins around several hundred times per second will produce gravitational waves with a period of a few milliseconds. A pair of neutron stars orbiting one another, with an orbital period of a few minutes, will produce gravitational waves with that period. And the supermassive black holes in this story, which are separated by a few light years, must take at least a few years to orbit one another, so the gravitational waves they produce will have a period of years.

Gravitational waves also have a wavelength. They travel at the speed of light, so the wavelength is equal to the distance that light travels in one period. For a period of milliseconds, that's a distance of a few hundred kilometres; for a period of minutes, it's millions of kilometres; and for a period of years, it's (obviously) a distance of light-years.

Now, here's the key bit: to detect gravitational waves, you need to use a detector with a size comparable to (within a factor of 10-100 of) the wavelength. This is why the LIGO experiment, which uses laser beams running down tunnels a few kilometres in length, and the LISA experiment, which uses satellites flying in formation a few million kilometres apart, both exist and have separate goals: they can detect gravitational waves with periods of milliseconds or minutes respectively.

For the sort of gravitational waves produced by the system described in this story, with a period of years, there's no way we can practically build a large enough detector to detect them. But, we can cheat. Pulsars, which are ~hundreds of light-years away, produce regular signals that we can use to measure the distance to them, in the same way that LIGO or LISA measure the distance between their components. Pulsar timing array experiments use this trick to effectively make a giant gravitational wave detector that's hundreds of light-years across.

So, in summary: the black holes described in this article should produce gravitational waves with a period of years. These waves can be detected by monitoring pulsars, turning the Earth-and-pulsars into a giant gravitational wave detector. Other types of detectors (including the planned space-based one) are designed to detect gravitational waves with shorter periods.

somehow nostalgic

[Werrismys]

"they were separated by just a few light-years" sounds like my high school drama.

Microsoft is buying Intellectual Ventures?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, maybe I need to read TFS before posting, if not TFA...

About to

[reiter.john]

You could say "About to" if it where 3.8 billion years ago. Just because we are about to see it doesn't change the fact that it already happened about 3.8 billion years ago.

Re:About to

[wonkey_monkey]

Only in this reference frame.

Re:About to

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can say about to because they're not doing it yet.

If they'd already coalesced, we would not see two black holes but one.

We see two black holes.

Not one.

Therefore they haven't coalesced yet.

Re:About to

[wonkey_monkey]

We see two black holes.

Not one.

Therefore they haven't coalesced yet.

The light takes 3.8 billion light years to get here, so they may well have already* coalesced.

*for a value of "already" that unique to our reference frame.

Event horizons

[drakesword]

From the blackhole standpoints they will never 'embrace'. Nor do they care, they are blackholes!

Re:Event horizons

[michelcolman]

Actually, it's the other way around. From their point of view, they will embrace just fine. From our point of view, they never will.

If you fall into a black hole, outside observers will see you slowing down to a halt, and your watch stopping, before you reach the event horizon. For you, though, time will continue normally and you will cross the event horizon in a finite amount of time.

In fact, depending on what coordinate system you use, black holes may not even exist yet. Every "almost-black-hole" is stuck in time at the stage just before the last bit of matter falls in to make it an actual black hole. But since coordinate systems are inherently subjective, that doesn't really matter.

Re:Event horizons

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's the other way around. From their point of view, they will embrace just fine. From our point of view, they never will.

If you fall into a black hole, outside observers will see you slowing down to a halt, and your watch stopping, before you reach the event horizon. For you, though, time will continue normally and you will cross the event horizon in a finite amount of time.

In fact, depending on what coordinate system you use, black holes may not even exist yet. Every "almost-black-hole" is stuck in time at the stage just before the last bit of matter falls in to make it an actual black hole. But since coordinate systems are inherently subjective, that doesn't really matter.

Thankfully the universe is actually quantized, so it doesn't really work the way you described. When science makes extraordinary and absurd claims, it's more likely than not that it is misinterpreting how some equation relates to actual reality.

Re:Event horizons

[Anonymous Coward]

When science makes extraordinary and absurd claims, it's more likely than not that it is misinterpreting how some equation relates to actual reality.

Therefore black holes and most of GR don't really exist.... well, except more and more of it have been confirmed. There isn't much meaning behind such a general argument, and it could be applied to just about anything.

The reason in falling things appearing to get stuck doesn't matter anyway is that it redshifts as it falls, and in a very short, human time scale redshifts way out of a practical wavelength. So things will still disappear from view, just not by falling, but by redshifting.

Obligatory Muse Reference

[PopeRatzo]

Glaciers melting in the dead of night
And the superstars sucked into the supermassive
Supermassive black hole

Re:Obligatory Muse Reference

[soccerisgod]

Damn! I just wanted to post that :D Was my first thought on reading that headline, too!

Light the candles and put on the music

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you go supermassively black, you don't go back, baby.

same thing in Russian

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/06/22/black-holes-even-the-name-sucks/

Rephrasing the question properly

[Ukab the Great]

Given the countless galaxies, each with its own supermassive black hole, just like intersecting waves...would you like a piece of toast?

Re:Rephrasing the question properly

[Sardaukar86]

+1 for the obscure RD reference!

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid question, but,

If they were 1000 LY's apart, and are now just "a few" LY's apart, *during the timespan of human scientific observation via modern optical tech*, does that indicate they are traveling FTL?

eg, they moved 1000 LY inside of (50?) earth years.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The record of their motion is embedded in the jets extending out from them, which extends back over a much longer time period than the history of astronomy.

Episode X

[Anonymous Coward]

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Two supermassive black holes are about to collide.

divide by zero

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when both black holes collide and suck each other in?

Re:divide by zero

[rsborg]

So what happens when both black holes collide and suck each other in?

As you read about black holes and event horizons you'll find that an external observer will never really see anything "hiting" the center of the black hole as time dilation forces the object to appear to go slower and slower as it descends the gravity well of the singularity.

In short, the heat-death of the universe will happen before we (assuming we live forever) ever find out what happens to this kind of singularity merger.

A Strange Meeting

[JimSadler]

So we are to conceive the notion of two singularities merging to become one. But a singularity has zero size and therefore has zero location. And even though the two combine the size will stay the same. If i tried to make an equation with this mess it would read huge nowhere of zero size plus another huge nowhere of size equals another nowhere no larger than either of the original nowheres. So there we have it 1 plus one now equals 1. I think I need more meds.

Re:A Strange Meeting

[Neil Boekend]

See it like this:
A black hole (size 0) combines with another black hole (size 0) to form a bigger black hole (size 0). 0+0=0 so that works.
As for location: black holes do have a location. It's at the center of their schwarschild radius.

All this is difficult to know for sure. We can hardly go and take a look.

Re:A Strange Meeting

[michelcolman]

All this is difficult to know for sure. We can hardly go and take a look.

Sure you can! Just too bad you can't get the information back to us.

Re:A Strange Meeting

[Anonymous Coward]

The singularity is treated as having zero size (although for a rotating blackhole, it is ring shaped, not a point), but black holes still have a size for their event horizon determined by the mass. You combine two black holes, and their masses combined giving a larger event horizon. In principle their rotation and charge, the other two properties they can have, will combine too.

Re:A Strange Meeting

[Neil Boekend]

Sorry, I have other plans with the rest of my existence.

that's a big distance to close in on so fast

[BringsApples]

They look out and see 2 black holes thousands of light years apart. Then they look later (not thousands of years later, mind you) and they're mere light years apart. I have such a poor understanding of how this is possible. Can anyone explain?

Re:that's a big distance to close in on so fast

[Urkki]

They're looking at the jets, which conveniently record the history of the interaction, like a recording tape that is shooting out of them.

The black holes themselves are still moving quite "normally".

The relativity of wrong

[TapeCutter]

Yep, when I was at school black holes were considered a "mathematical curiosity", it was considered "impossible" to detect planets around nearby starts with an Earth bound telescope, the phrase "big bang theory" was still a derisive comment about said theory, there was still a debate about the reality of tectonic plates....the list is long and I'm only in my 50's. - This phenomena is what Asimov referred to as The relativity of wrong

Information can transfer faster than light

[sinij]

Information can transfer faster than light via quantum entanglement. As such, in your hypothetical example of observational outpost we had a way to know "NOW" 3.8b ago.

Re:Information can transfer faster than light

[RockDoctor]

Information can transfer faster than light via quantum entanglement.

I'll fix that last bit ...

via the quantum entanglement of particles whose travel is limited to the speed of light.

If you like your SF, Charlie Stross has a couple of books where the consequences of that are explored (as a plot element of moderate consequence). Singularity Sky (2003, ISBN 0-441-01072-5) and Iron Sunrise (2004, ISBN 1-84149-335-X) ; good enough to live on my ink-and-paper bookshelf.

Intent

[wjcofkc]

Perhaps what we are seeing is an engineering effort or scientific experiment beyond our understanding. Perhaps one day, if we survive our infancy, we to will find a practical use for black holes. Assuming an upper limit to technology does not prevent their manipulation. As it stands - with physics in general so incomplete - who knows? Don't mind me, I'm posting on very little sleep.

Saturn's hexagon...

[SternisheFan]

In other space news... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-350

i know their names!

[Anonymous Coward]

those are probably jr smith and gilbert arenas playing pick up basketball in the universe

its not that rare

At what point do they actually "embrace"?

[severn2j]

At which point are they actually considered to be "embracing"? When the event horizons merge, or the singularities?

Re:FSVO "about" -- huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm not sure you can use the term "about" to describe something that happened 3.8 billion years ago

That is not the (main) problem.

TFA >> The dance of this black hole duo started out slowly, with the objects circling each other at a distance of about a few thousand light-years. As the black holes continued to spiral in toward each other, they were separated by just a few light-years.

Did someone observe that? Since when? A few thousand years ago?

Because if they started observing said blackholes from, say, 1970 -- well, let's say my universe ending perspective changed somewhat... anyone care to explain? Or is the "few thousands" part "assumed"?

Only in this reference frame....

[MondoGordo]

It's the only one we have ... everything else is theoretical.

Re:Only in this reference frame....

[wonkey_monkey]

It's not at all theoretical. It's how reality works. It isn't any less true just because we can't anything bigger than a subatomic particle anywhere near such a reference frame at the moment.

I would love to see pics of this

[jzatopa]

OK from the little I understand about black holes. Time dilation increases as you get closer to the center of the black hole. As you get closer it will take you longer to get there. What is predicted to happen to timespace when two event horizons meet? The amount of gravity pulling on spacetime between the two is higher then man has ever witnessed but I'm sure some physicist has put some work into the idea. It is also an experiment that we are unable to create because we have yet to find a way to manipulate gravity in any significant way. Will we just end up with an even larger black hole? If so I bet that we have more understood about physics then we realize. Will a wormhole open up between the two or will we see a tear in the fabric of our space time, revealing a deeper dimension to our universe? I hope so because that means we have a whole lot more to learn about spacetime and gravity. This is such fun stuff to think about. We really need to point our best telescopes at this area and get it on tape.

Re:I would love to see pics of this

[Maritz]

It's proximity to the event horizon that shows strong relativistic effects akin to being accelerated close to c (rather than proximity to the centre in and of itself). Black hole event horizons are not 'made' of anything in particular, they're just a region of space, so I expect we could observe black holes merging without any difficulties. Objects thrown in will appear to slow down and stop on the event horizon before gradually disappearing.

Only an Abstract

[bbsalem]

Only the abstract is available, the article hasn't yet been published. According to the link.

Er ... Relativity?

[Dabido]

'... objects circling each other at a distance of about a few thousand light-years. As the black holes continued to spiral in toward each other, they were separated by just a few light-years.'

Maybe I'm missing something, but if they were observed a few thousand light years from each other, then as far as I can tell, at the speed of light it would take them a few thousand years to get near each other. But, they are now 'a few light-years' from each other. How did they close that massive gap in the years they were being observed, considering it is a lot less than a few thousand years they have been getting observed?'

Re: It's how reality works.

[MondoGordo]

Cite proof of "reality" please.

Re: It's how reality works.

[wonkey_monkey]

I would, but I'm not sure you exist, so there's probably no point.