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Colliding Black Holes' Energy Jets Could Be Detected
from the Christian Science Monitor
When galaxies collide, the merger between the supermassive black holes at their hearts could create super-powerful jets of radiation that astronomers may eventually be able to spot with new space observatories, a new study suggests.
In the new study, physicists built computer models to study the merger between two gigantic black holes. They found that such events would create an incredibly energetic jet of electromagnetic radiation. And the cosmic show would actually begin as the black holes spiral toward each other, a while before the big gravitational crunch occurs, researchers said.
These jets would be similar to the linear jets shooting out from the vicinity of black holes along their axis of rotation, which astronomers have already detected. But the merger-created jets would be much more powerful, and they would be accompanied by less linear blasts of radiation--giving astronomers a decent shot at observing a black-hole collision as it happens, researchers said.
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