A prediction of an imminent Black Hole collision

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John Clark

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Sep 3, 2022, 10:16:47 AM9/3/22
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A prediction has been made that 2 supermassive black holes in a galaxy 1.1 billion light years away will collide within the next 3 years. The galaxy has a core that is extremely bright in optical, ultraviolet and x-rays and the interesting thing is the intensity of the radiation fluctuates and the period of the fluctuations has been shortening, just three years ago the fluctuation was about one year long but today it's only about one month. There could be several reasons for this but the most obvious one is that 2 supermassive black holes, each with about 100,000,000 solar masses, had an orbital period of one year back in 2019 but an orbital period of only one month today; if that is indeed the case then they are orbiting faster and faster and thus getting closer and closer together and should collide sometime within the next 3 years, perhaps even this year. Such a collision would produce enormously powerful gravitational waves but LIGO will not be able to see them because the longest frequency wave it can detect is about a 10th of a second and colliding supermassive Black Holes would produce gravitational waves with a period of hours or days; however such waves might be detectable by observing simultaneous tiny changes in the frequency of pulsars located in widely separated places; this is because the gravitational waves would slightly move the Earth and thus slightly change the observed frequency of the pulsars in a way that was consistent with their location relative to us.

The great thing about this prediction is that we'll know if it's right or wrong within the next 3 years.


John K Clark

Lawrence Crowell

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Sep 3, 2022, 3:00:15 PM9/3/22
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It would be best if continual measurements of pulsar timing was made. A large wavelength gravitational wave, maybe millions of kilometers long, would result in a time dilation of measured pulsar timing as the gravitational wave passes the space between us and the pulsar.

LC

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Brent Allsop

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Sep 6, 2022, 3:47:18 PM9/6/22
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Would it be a good assumption to think these 2 black holes were the cores of two galaxies that have finally merged, this collision being the final step of the merge?

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John Clark

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Sep 6, 2022, 4:01:42 PM9/6/22
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On Tue, Sep 6, 2022 at 3:47 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Would it be a good assumption to think these 2 black holes were the cores of two galaxies that have finally merged, this collision being the final step of the merge?

Either that or the galaxy originally formed around two supermassive black holes, or maybe something completely different because although we understand how solar mass Black Holes are formed nobody really understands how Supermassive Black holes are formed, there doesn't seem to have been enough time since the Big Bang for enough stellar mass Black Holes to come together to form one,  but somehow or another supermassive Black Holes get made.

John K Clark





 
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