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27th Feb 2022

Supermassive black holes will smash into each other and warp space and time, scientists warn

Kieran Galpin

Via Getty

Put it in your calendars, 10,000 years from now

Two massive black holes will collide in 10,000 years causing ripples to be sent across the universe as time and space, scientists have warned.

Research from Astronomers at CalTech found that two black holes, currently 9 billion light-years away in deep space, are revolving around each other every two years.

Via Getty

Their study, entitled The Unanticipated Phenomenology of the Blazar PKS 2131–021: A Unique Supermassive Black Hole Binary, was published on February 23.

Each of the black holes is said to have a mass that is hundreds of millions of times larger than our Sun, which has a mass 333,000 times larger than Earth.

The two space bodies are relatively close to each other, in space terms at least. They currently sit at 1,950 astronomical units apart, roughly 50 times more than the distance between our Sun and the furthest space rock in our solar system, Pluto.

Both supermassive black holes were discovered in the highly-luminous space body known as a Quasar.

In this case, the quasar has been dubbed PKS 2131-021 and belongs to a class called blazers which shoot their jets of light towards Earth.

Via Getty

The authors of the study said that galaxy mergers are not as uncommon as you might think. They said: “there are relatively few instances of two galaxies with supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in their nuclei being seen in the actual process of the merging.”

You might be asking, how the hell do black holes merge? Well, as galaxies come together, their black holes are drawn inwards to the central point of the merger. Eventually, they connect to become an even more giant black hole that disrupts the very fabric of the universe.