When Black Holes Waltz

Jack Dikian

August 2011

When examining galaxies at when the universe is half its age, approximately 30 out of 100 galaxies not only have a supper massive (million to a billion times larger then our Sun) black hole but have 2 black holes Orbiting around each other – dancing the waltz.

What’s interesting is that almost anywhere we look we find supper massive black holes waltzing at the centre of their respective galaxies. As these block holes orbit around each other, they distort the very fabric of Spacetime and send ripples cross the universe. This wobble might be heard here on Earth even when we can’t see them.

The orbits of paired black holes look nothing like the typical elliptical paths we see in our local neighbourhood of the universe. Instead supper massive paired-blacks holes follow a path that resembles more a 3-leaf clover.

The shocking thing here is that how some of the heaviest objects in the universe orbit around each other resembles exactly how the lightest objects in the universe orbit around each other, ie protons and electrons.

The smallest objects in the universe behave the same way as the largest.