Black Holes

[flano]

What happens when two black holes facing each other come in contact

[jake-the-peg]

There's quite a bit of interest in coliding black holes - a lot depends on how deep you want to go. The interest is because of the possibility of detecting gravity waves from such an event.

In the basics they just merge, if you want a bit more and to see some pretty pictures and animations yu could have a look here:

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/amazingspace/reports/holes.html

orjust type colliding black hole into google and settle back for a long read

[Sligachan14]

Maybe a black WHOLE

[stevie21]

A black hole can only be so big before it implodes or something highly technical. I'm sure a wee Indian chappie done the math on this a while back and gave a maximum size.

If anyone needs more info, wait for an intelligent response from someone who actually knows what they're talking about or I'll reread that few pages of the book if prompted.

[jake-the-peg]

I think you may have slightly misunderstood.

There is a minimum size and there is an issue of Hawkin (guess who did the maths) radiation over the event horizon causing small black holes to loose mass and ultimately explode - although nobody has observed this.

Currently it's believed there may be massive black holes at the centre of galaxies.

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q330.html

Was the "Indian Chappie" Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar ? One of the twentieth centuraries most notable astrophysicsts and Nobel Prize winner?

http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1983/chandrasekhar-autobio.html

He did a lot of the early work on black holes

[stevie21]

That's the lad - I didn't intend to sound patronising earlier by referring to him as "chappie", I'm just a tad flippant by nature.

So the Chandrasekhar Limt applies to other stars' sizes/masses but not black holes then?
Is it that once a star exceeds the C.Limit that it becomes a black hole as it can't support itself against its own gravity?

[landie]

It's a bit like a pair of binocculars.

[jake-the-peg]

As I recall the Chandresekhar is the limiting size for a star to collapse to a black hole.

If the star is above this limit it will become a black hole, if it is below that limit it will become a neutron star.

It is believed that micro black holes below this size might have been formed during the big bang. If so their evaporation due to Hawking radiation could lead to them becoming unstable about now.

To date nobody has found a micro black hole