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Saturday, February 13, 2016

What Happens When Black Holes Collide?


Perhaps you've heard that scientists have recorded the sound of two black holes colliding.  This sent gravitational waves (or ripples in the very fabric of spacetime) hurdling towards the earth, confirming a prediction of their existence made by Einstein over a century ago via the Theory of Relativity.

Forget about "how they know this".  That itself is a black hole to me as are a great many other things.  My cosmological ignorance goes on full display when I hear of black holes and spacetime and my mind immediately travels to Interstellar or A Wrinkle In Time.

I don't understand it.  I've tried to find the equivalent of "Black Hole Collisions and Space Time for Dummies" but to no avail.  There's simply too much underlying terminology and conceptual framework needed, and a person can't simply skip over all of that.

But this stuff absolutely fascinates me, this idea that space and time are dynamic and interactive.

A few articles on the story are here (NPR), here (New York Times) and here (Vice.com).

Also, check out this video on "What Happens When Two Black Holes Collide".


I suppose the NPR article linked above tells most of us all that we need to know about this and a great many other cosmological mysteries:
"The universe is stranger than any kind of fiction we could imagine.  I mean, it's preposterous."



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