What If Two Black Holes Collided?

black holes are the gravitational monsters of the universe they are so powerful that nothing not even light can escape their grasp one black hole is bad enough but if you took two black holes and smashed them into each other they'd be capable of changing the shape of space itself how would an ting with that explosion be and could it somehow reach earth this is what if and here's what would happen if two black holes collided of course we have no means to capture or control black holes yet so imagine you're observing one from a giant telescope here on earth and suddenly you notice something strange is that another black hole it sure looks like it and it also looks like these two are about to collide it turns out that even gravitational giants like black holes occasionally run into each other in the seemingly vast universe are you about to see a nuclear bomb like explosion of supersize proportions the reality might be a little disappointing but you still wouldn't want that galactic bomb to detonate anywhere near your planet bear with me here because to understand how black holes collide you need to arm yourself with a bit of theory black holes come in all shapes and sizes and of course the magnitude of the collision would depend on which black holes are slammed together stellar-mass black holes are the most common type they can have up to 20 solar masses but could fit in a ball much smaller in diameter than our Sun okay now let's go back to you observing this gravitational show first hand first you see the two black holes getting a little closer until they started to orbit each other they would begin pulling matter and gas into a vortex between them get comfortable because it could take billions of years for their centers to merge but as the two black holes merged into one they wobble a little and then settle down into a new bigger black hole now I hope you're not disappointed with such an explosion-free outcome but wait there's something I haven't mentioned yet the excess energy from the collision would be expelled back into the universe as gravitational waves as I mentioned before colliding black holes can change the shape of the space around them they do it by rippling this space with gravitational waves Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves over a hundred years ago but scientists didn't observe them until 2015 when the advanced LIGO gravitational wave Observatory finally detected gravitational waves after eight years of operation the cool thing about these waves is that they affect the distance between the Sun and the earth they only change it by the diameter of a hydrogen atom you'd need a whole lot of colliding black holes to really see a difference but what about supermassive black holes would their collision be more explosive these black holes have a mass of at least hundreds of thousands of times the mass of our Sun but the thing is they might never even collide at all two supermassive giants would get close to each other until they reached a gravitational balance and froze in their respective orbits but add another supermassive black hole to the equation and the three of them could tip over the gravitational scale and finally collide not in a massive cosmic explosion but a silent merger sending powerful gravitational waves throughout the universe you know despite the fact that black holes are an unstoppable insatiable force from which nothing can escape we have nothing to fear from their collision okay maybe if that collision happened somewhere in the neighborhood of our solar system then the merging black holes would rip all the planets in their vicinity to shreds include if you really want to look at a black hole even a single black hole and not turn into a human flavored spaghetti noodle you need to make sure you stay a safe distance away but that's a story for another what if

Channel: What If

Views: 2,354,644

Keywords: what if, what happens if, scifi, science documentary, what if scenario, biggest questions in science, what if cosmos, what if two black holes collided together, black holes explained, black hole documentary, physics, astronomy, space universe, supermassive black hole, black holes colliding, nasa, astrophysics, gravitational waves, black holes sound

Id: yFvFK5qrdA4

Length: 5min 8sec (308 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 21 2020