2 Black Holes side by side.

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Zersy

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Imagine that 2 black holes formed, right next to each other with little distance between them, what would happen ? Would they swallow each other ? Would they combine together to form a bigger black hole ? or would they remain unaffected ?
 

Colour Scientist

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They might hit it off, get married and have several beautiful black hole babies.

Honestly, I have no clue. I'm more of an artsy-fartsy person, I'm not down with the specifics of science.
 

Thaluikhain

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Black holes are masses like any other. It's only close in to them that weird things happen.

If you ahd two uncollapsed stars of the same masses instead, they'd behave the same way. They could move past each other, one could orbit the other, they could fall into each other etc. Take each star and individually compress it and they'd still move the same way (well, you get them throwing stuff out when they collapse and all).
 

Doitpow

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If they were stationary when formed, they would indeed be drawn together and collide. The result would be a black hole of the same size (singularity remember) but with twice(ish) the mass. It's event horizon would extend by about 70% by newtonian physics, and a little more by general relativity.

edited to correct my maths, how embarrasing
 

Veldt Falsetto

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bloody ridiculous that this was the only video I could find of this song but whatever


only because of the last bit really

but yeah, who knows, a bigger black hole would make sense but surely the mystery that surrounds black holes in the first place makes the question interesting, we don't know what's in there, do we? We don't know what'd happen if a black hole and a black hole collided
 

Thaluikhain

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Veldt Falsetto said:
but yeah, who knows, a bigger black hole would make sense but surely the mystery that surrounds black holes in the first place makes the question interesting, we don't know what's in there, do we? We don't know what'd happen if a black hole and a black hole collided
Actually, we more or less do.

What goes on in intense gravitational fields is unknown, true. But gravitational fields are the result of mass, and they tend to attract other masses, limited by teh distance between them. That's understood very well.

The two would attract each other, and should they reach each other, become one singularity of total mass equal to the total combined mass of what they were before.

Apart from the weird stuff happening close to the singularity (how fast they fall into each other, for example), nothing that strange going on.
 

mikey7339

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UNKNOWNINCOGNITO said:
Imagine that 2 black holes formed, right next to each other with little distance between them, what would happen ? Would they swallow each other ? Would they combine together to form a bigger black hole ? or would they remain unaffected ?
You can find out yourself. Go download Universe Sandbox from Steam (it's only like 5 bucks).



I think I tried this and they just ended up orbiting each other. IRL they would orbit each other but would eventually merge to form a more massive black hole.
 

x EvilErmine x

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They would combine to create a singularity with a mass equal to the mass of the individual singularities. Well that's if they were not thrown out of there orbits by the absolutely massive supernova that is caused by the formation of the singularity in the first place anyway.

If i recall correctly all stars above a particular mass (about 1.4 times the mass of our sun) go supernova at the end of there life. I think it's called the Chandreskar limit. Above that limit the gravitational attraction of the mass is so grate that the star collapses in on it's self. The matter in the core rebounds off all the other matter in the core due to the Pauli exclusion principal and creates a huge explosion i.e. a supernova. If the star is really massive then the gravitational attraction of the core is so great that it overcomes even the exclusion principal and the core collapse in on it's self and forms a singularity.

If i got any of that wrong then clarification from someone more knowledgeable on the matter would be appreciated. I am only an amateur but i really do find that kind of stuff fascinating.
 

DasDestroyer

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Basically, they would attract each other and get it on combine into a larger black hole once they reach each other.
 

Brandon237

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Depends.
They would act (almost) exactly as any two other bodies of the same mass.
If they were too far apart or moving too fast when they came under each other's influence, they would slingshot past each other.

They could also end up simply orbiting each other until the end of time or something happened that they moved close / further.

If they were close enough that their orbits decayed towards each other, they would merge into one black hole that had the same mass as the original two together.

EDIT: 2 captchas in a row. Really?