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But what if two black holes collide? Imagine two rapidly
spinning objects, many times more massive than the Sun,
but the size of a small village, crashing into each other
at nearly the speed of light! This violent event should
emit a great burst of gravitational waves! Even so, the
signals would be so weak when they arrive here on earth
that they will be exceedingly difficult to detect, even
with the new generation of gravitational
wave detectors being built around the world. Such weak
signals may be very difficult to see in the noise of the
detector data.
However, if one knows what to look for in the data, it
will be much easier to find the signals. Furthermore,
once a signal is discovered, it is very important to
interpret its meaning. However, at present there is no
detailed understanding of the process of black hole
colisions, nor of the specific form of the gravitational
waves emitted. Our project aims to use large scale
computers to simulate black hole collisions, in an attempt
to provide information needed to find the signals that
should be seen in gravitational wave detectors, and to
interpret these signals if they are seen.
This sequence of images shows one of the first 3D
simulations, carried out by members of the Network, of two
spinning black holes merging in the final stages of a
rapidly decaying orbit. The leftmost images shows the two
individual black holes about to merge. The individual horizons
are shown in the center of image (the larger black hole is
just above a smaller one). The developing burst of
radiation is shown shooting out towards the upper left
direction and to the lower right. (Note that in computer
simulation visualizations, black holes do not have to be
black! Here we made them multicolored to bring out
details of the curvature of their horizon surfaces!) The
final image on the right shows the final black hole, with
the two original black hole horizon surfaces still seen
inside, and also shows the developing and intensifying
burst of gravitational waves.
The Network is making good progress on this difficult
problem, and from time to time we will update the website
to provide more recent results.
Check out the Movies page for the latest black hole merger simulations!
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