| arya | Date: Tuesday, 13-January-2015, 1:10 PM | Message # 1 |
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| If the two black holes meet, they could release as much energy as 100 million supernova explosions as they shatter their galaxy, a new study finds.
A team of prominent researchers has discovered what appears to be the start of two massive black holes at the centers of their own galaxies beginning to collide.
Such an event should come as no surprise, considering that there are up to 200 billion galaxies in the universe (according to Space.com), so two of them are bound to bump into each other from time to time. In fact, astronomers have already observed the merging of galaxies (as seen in the image above), but they've never before witnessed the end-stage process of galaxy commingling, which results when the two central black holes smash into each other, releasing some pretty violent cosmic fireworks that could warp space-time itself.
The researchers, including scientists from Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, have theorized that an unusual light signal they're seeing from quasar PG 1302-102 -- essentially a black hole emitting light from the superheated particles swirling around its gravitational drain -- is being caused by the cosmic dance between two black holes in the system, each located less than the length of our solar system apart. The theory was published this week in the journal Nature.
While other cosmic phenomena could explain the light signature, the scientists became confident that their theory is the most likely after analyzing the quasar's light spectrum.
Read more/full article/source - http://www.cnet.com/uk....-itself
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