Black Holes Merging !?

One black hole may be powerful, but think of the power of three or more black holes merging into one ! Astrophysicists used a computer model to predict what would happen if several black holes were to orbit each other.

The simulations show three possiblities: one, mesh together into one big black hole, two, two of them mesh while the third orbits around in a very elliptical orbit, and three, they all fly apart. Like a collisions, this would also cause a massive release of energy. However, due to the densities of the merging masses, it is predicted that the merging would release tons of energy in the form of gravitational waves, or warps in space-time.

So far, scientists have been unable to detect gravitational waves, which are predicted by Einstein's General Relativity. Something to help that would be simulations, so we have a model that predicts what we would see. It tells the people who do those experiments what kind of signature is characteristic of black holes.

The scientists' model simulates the simplest case of a black hole triplet: three non-spinning black holes of equal masses. They plan to expand their models to include more complex systems, but currently, even their basic models were very computationally expensive. It took their giant supercomputer two weeks, running 24 hours a day, to complete the simulations. Hopefully, in the future they will take less time to complete, and be more complex.