More Evidence for the Coming Black Hole Collision

Evelyn Kluemper

10/8/15

Earth Science

Overbye, Dennis. "More Evidence for Coming Black Hole Collision." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2015. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.

More Evidence for the Coming Black Hole Collision

Astronomers from Caltech have observed strange activity in a galaxy nearly 3.5 billion light years away and have confirmed that there will be a black hole collision.  They noticed flickering in the galaxy nucleus, in a celestial object called PG 1302-102.  Scientists have predicted that the collision will destroy its galaxy.

The theory of black holes was developed from Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.  They are defined as objects that are so dense that it even absorbs light.  The mass of the two colliding black holes are estimated to have a total mass of more than a billion suns.  It will release energy equivalent to 100 million supernova explosions, which will ripple as gravitational waves.  These waves will blow away stars and destroy its galaxy.  The black holes are currently orbiting each other at a distance of only 200 billion miles.  Scientists believe that we will see evidence of the collision in about 100,000 years.  This theory is based on the idea that the more massive a black hole is, the faster it is drawn to its pair.  However, scientists believe that this collision happened nearly 3 billion years ago.  Astronomers are discovering evidence of this now because the light and gravitational waves that were omitted from this collision are still traveling through space.

This article is relevant to society because scientists will be able to detect gravitational waves from this collision in the next few years.  The waves will disrupt the rhythm of pulsars, which are celestial bodies that constantly emit a pattern of electromagnetic radiation and radio signals.  They expect to discover more about black holes from this evidence.  The scientists will also be able to evaluate how accurate their theories were and use the information for future discoveries.

This article was informative, but confusing.  The author used direct quotes from experts in the 
field from Caltech and Columbia University, which was helpful.  However, many of the terms that were used difficult and unfamiliar.  I had to do additional research to be able to fully understand the article.  The article was written in many short, concise paragraphs, rather than long paragraphs with main idea and its evidence.  This made the article difficult to read and lacking connections between ideas.