Imminent merger of a supermassive black hole binary
This is insane!Between 100 days and 3 years we will record what will be the single largest energy release we have ever recorded.To give an idea of our records so far: our detection of black hole mergers around the 100-150 solar masses scale are just behind a couple gamma ray bursts as the single largest energy release ever.How big are the black hole mergers around 150 solar masses and the two largest gamma ray bursts?The energy release converted the mass of between 1-6 solar masses into energy.With black hole mergers this energy release/conversion is in the form of gravitational waves that we then detect!So imagine the sun, times 6, every atom, converted into that energy. That’s what we have already recorded.This predicted one is not even in the same ballpark. Those 1-6 sun matter into energy conversions are ants compared to what’s coming.These supermassive black holes are thousands to tens of thousands of times the mass of our sun. (Not sure if the ones in this paper are in the billion solar masses class. Yes they do exist)This event will convert the mass of perhaps a hundred or a thousand suns worth of matter into energy in an instant. (Not sure if the paper gives any accurate predictions I’m lazy!)