The collision of black holes

The collision of black holes

A long time scientists and astronomers have assumed that the cataclysm occurring in the collision of two black holes, emitting enormous energy that generates gravitational waves. And only recently this theory has received the first practical confirmation. According to estimates, the energy of collision is equal to the energy released in a space of 10^23 stars, equivalent in all respects to the Sun. Just imagine - the energy of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars! And the most important thing in this is that all this mass of energy is released within a very short period of time, during the last few turns around each other colliding black holes, which eventually merge and form a single rotating black hole large sizes.

Thus, the system of two black holes of space are real bombs. The timer of this bomb depends on many parameters, from the size and mass of the black hole, the speed and size of the initial orbits of their movement. And when this timer is triggered, cause a strong gravitational explosion, the echo of which resounds through the Universe, telling about this event to anyone who is able to "hear" gravitational waves.

Binary (double) system of black holes can be formed in two different ways. The first way is the birth of two supermassive stars in close proximity from each other. Such double stars are fairly common, they account for one-third to half of the total number of stars in the Universe. It is known that such massive stars are extremely short lived, they quickly "burn" his turbulent life, explode and die "young" to stars the age of a million years, leaving behind a pair of black holes.

The second by the formation of pairs of black holes is the meeting of two black holes born separately in different corners of the cosmos. This occurs usually due to loss process the black hole, its initial potential energy that is expended on the acceleration of nearby stars due to the effect of "gravitational" slingshot, pulling matter from the surrounding space and other similar processes. As a result the energy loss of the black hole begins to shift to the center of the galaxy or cluster of galaxies, where there is a meeting with a black hole that's already there.

Two black holes

The collision of black holes

Two connected black holes are more active space object, rather than another black hole. In most cases, such black holes have a mass between 20 to 100 times the mass of the sun. However, they very effectively clean from the stars surrounding space or absorbing their matter or "rasshvyrivaya" them further into space by their gravitational perturbations. Due to the high activity of the binary system is quickly evolving, their black holes gain weight, which leads to changes of the speeds and trajectories of their movement.

Each step in the evolution of the binary systems of black holes leads to the loss of kinetic and potential energy, what makes black holes more and more closer to each other. And as a result this process is becoming faster and faster, which leads to an inevitable collision. The approximation process can considerably be accelerated when one of the black holes companion receives an additional gravitational "kick" from a star or other clumps of matter floating around in space nearby.

The rotation of two black holes, regardless of the reasons for the pairing in and of itself creates a small gravitational waves. And billions of such pairs in the Universe to create the permanent background of gravitational waves, the signal of which is completely random in nature. However, the final merger of two black holes create gravitational waves, which are General background comparable to the tsunami wave relative to normal sea waves.

Currently only a binary system of black holes and the resulting gravitational waves are of interest to scientists. They are like a kind of cosmic "time capsules", the gravitational explosions which carry a lot of useful information about the past that can be decrypted and which can shed light on some fundamental mysteries of the Universe. And it is only recently that humanity has at its disposal a tool that gravitational Observatory LIGO, which allows you to register gravitational waves and "remove" them from some portion of the transferred information.