What happens when a black hole meets another black hole?

Question

Is it possible for one to meet the other in the first place?

Answer 1

This would seem impossible since they would have to start at the same instant very close together otherwise one would have already began tearing apart the other star that would have collapsed into a black hole preventing it from becoming a black hole.

Answer 2

Good question.

In fact, astrophysicists have long wondered the same thing; so they build computer simulations to see what would happen. The answer...it depends...like so many things in physics do.

Black holes appear to behave in some ways like any other mass...like a billiard ball, for example. When two holes of comparable size meet head on, they appear to merge and emit a lot of energy from the so-called event horizon area just outside the hole. Presumably some, if not most, of the total energy emitted is swallowed up by the merging black holes.

When two holes brush each other, they bounce off in predictable directions, like two billiard balls. Again they emit loads of energy that might be detected if anyone were looking at a real collision.

By the way, theory has it that many, if not most or all, galaxies have black holes in their centers. So when these simulated black holes collide, they are each carrying billions and billions of stars with them. So the simulations on a computer screen are quite spectacular.

Answer 3

Assuming they aren't travelling too fast when they meet, they will eventually merge and give off a lot of high energy particles in the form of a gama ray burst.

This is a very possible scenario and probably has happened many times in the early universe as smaller galaxies collided forming larger galaxies. At the current age of the universe however the probability is low that these type of events will occur. With larger more powerful telescopes that can look farther out and hence farther back in time, it may be possible to detect these mergers at a time in the universes history when they were happening more frequently.

Answer 4

Little baby black holes

Answer 5

Evidence suggests that when galaxies collide, their central black holes eventually merge. Computer modeling is being done to understand how this occurs.

Answer 6

Donald Rumsfeld

Answer 7

They get married, and make little black holes!

Answer 8

Well, I suppose they will slowly come together through gravitational acceleration, and they'll join, making another, more dense, black hole.

Answer 9

Nothing escapes a black hole, so they would not escape each other. My guess[1] is that they merge.

Answer 10

Yes! The larger blackhole adds the other to it, increasing its size until you get Blackholes the size of the ones in the centre of every galaxy!