Black holes represent ultradense and ultracompact objects with powerful gravity, which attracts everything that crosses the horizon of events. Frequent victims are stars, gas and dust. But what happens if black holes decide to have dinner with each other?
Back in 2012, researchers decided to find the answer to this question using a computer model. In short, we will get a huge new supermassive black hole. It is worth noting, however, that this is not the process of absorption, but merger.
As two supermassive black holes approach, their surrounding disks of rotating gas and dust merge, forming a high vortex, rising above the center point of the accretion disk.
Models show that this towering vortex is a necessary type of structure for the movement of particle jets. The merging process was supposed to lead to the formation of gravitational waves (distortions in space and time), which in theory could be fixed from the Earth.
For the first time, Albert Einstein spoke about gravitational waves in 1916. For a long time they continued to exist in theory, as well as the process of merging black holes. But in 2015, a scientific breakthrough finally occurred.
Last black hole confluence events
The LIGO Observatory recorded an unusual event on September 14, 2015. It turned out that these were gravitational waves formed during the collision of black holes, 1.3 billion light-years distant from us. This event was called GW150914. By mass, concrete black holes exceeded the sun 36 and 29 times. But in the process itself, about three solar masses went to the radiation event.
It turns out that when a black hole absorbs a star, a planet, a gas or dust, then these objects are destroyed and “disappear” from our sight. But when meeting another black hole, these objects merge to form an even larger supermassive black hole.
The event in 2015 has become incredibly important for the scientific world. It made it possible to confirm the existence of black holes, double black holes and the possibility of their merging, as well as to fix gravitational waves for the first time.
