Astronomers have discovered
what
appears to be two supermassive black holes
one light-year apart, setting up for a
collision so massive and destructive it
could release as much energy as 100 million
supernovas and destroy it's galaxy .
The black holes are far away in a remote galaxy called PG 1302-102.
If Astronomers are accurate, the collision will happen in the next million years.
A long time for humans, but not in cosmic time.
A pair of black holes could yield valuable information about theorized but never directly detected gravitational waves.
According to Einstein's theory of general
relativity, gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that exist
. If the two black holes collide, most of the released energy will be in the form of gravitational waves, literally bending the fabric of space-time.
In the long history of the universe, black holes have almost certainly collided before. Destroying whole galaxies
is not just science fiction, its science
fact.
