• Question: What happens when a black hole collides with another black hole would it become and another larger black hole

    Asked by 933enek27 to Emma, Karla, Shane, Stephen, Yang on 14 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Emma Hanley

      Emma Hanley answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      I had to google this one, but it says they will merge once they are close enough. Once merged, the single hole settles down to a stable form.

    • Photo: Stephen Rhatigan

      Stephen Rhatigan answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      First, as they approach each other, under the influence of each others gravity, they will orbit about each other. Over millions of years they spiral closer and move faster. The energies are so huge that whole stars are “slingshotted” out of orbit.
      When the black holes are about 1 light year apart (9.5 trillion kilometers) they will begin to produce gravitational waves which contract and expand space itself.
      Finally they will merge and in the final moments the most powerful gravitational waves will be emitted.
      The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the first detection of gravitational waves. This happened in September 2015 – 100 years after Einstein predicted their existence in his theory of General Relativity.
      The gravitational waves which were detected came from the collision of two black holes and took 1.3 billion years to arrive at Earth.

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