Dancing black hole twins spotted

Reseachers have seen the best evidence yet for a pair of black holes orbiting each other within the same galaxy.

While such "binary systems" have been postulated before, none has ever been conclusively spotted.

The new black hole pair is dancing significantly closer than the prior best binary system candidate.

The work, published in the journal Nature, is in line with the theory of growth of galaxies, each with a black hole at its centre.

The theory has it that as galaxies near each other, their central black holes should orbit each other until merging together.

news.bbc.co.uk...

Black holes merging?
Guess I need to brush up on my space knowledge then.
It seems almost obvious to me that one black hole would 'eat' the smaller one. The energy these things have does not give me much insiight into how two collapsed stars with mega gravity cores are able to merge together... just doesn't make much sense to me.

How can they pair? Is there something about black holes we are yet to learn?

Ok, they could join and act as one, but surely one must do something dramatic to the other.

That said, this is one more step towards our understanding of them and the formation/destruction of galaxies.

wow dual rotating singularities. maybe they just found a natural time machine.

Perhaps like planetary bodies in space, when they get close enough to each other, the attraction forces become balanced with repulsion forces? In which case they would begin to tear surface area off each other?

I thought that they still haven't even proven nor have they imaged a black hole.

If black holes are real, I cannot imagine them being able to merge without something insanely destructive happening well beyond the reaches of the one merged galaxy.

There is much we dont know about blackholes, years ago Hawking thought he had it under control and has since admitted that he was wrong, what we mainly now is still based on his origanal physics. Now he has set about to unlock the blackhole before he dies as his greatest challenge. There are others working strongly in this field aswell. But at the moment we still cant see a blackhole as such but only the effects on its surrounds, and that is still theoritical as to if a blackhole is sucking mass in or it just distorts light and time. So hopefully they can figure it out one day.

reply to post by Atlantican


Check out his article. I watched the video of the 12 year observation, you can clearly see the stars orbiting something that cannot be seen, a black hole.

news.bbc.co.uk...

Maybe they would merge Geometry Wars style?

Should be a pretty sight nonetheless.

my money is on the old "a negative plus a negative=a negative" posture.
there is nothing to mix, interact, etc.

maybe it just becomes a slightly larger black hole.

Originally posted by SumnerKagan
my money is on the old "a negative plus a negative=a negative" posture.
there is nothing to mix, interact, etc.

maybe it just becomes a slightly larger black hole.

But that's the problem, how do two super heavy cores join together?

Both are capable of swallowing stars and planets and light and time etc etc.. so why not each other?

would they wipe themselves out or would one win over the other and eat it?

It just doesn't make too much sense that they could combine unless we are missing some very important info in relation to the nature of black holes and their design...
If they do combine then we will have to take a look at our science books again.

Yes, a combination of black holes could very well contribute towards the creation of new galaxies, but then again just a one black hole on it's own is capable of doing that given the right circumstances