Massive spinning Black Holes created in ‘Pac-Man like’ mergers
New research suggests that massive spinning black holes in accretion discs could chomp their way through smaller black holes.
Imagine a rapidly spinning black hole making its way through an accretion disc surrounding a much larger supermassive black hole. As it progresses, this black hole gobbles up material that it encounters — even cannibalising yet smaller still black holes. As it does, it becomes larger and more formidable. Sounds like a good idea for a computer game…
Thus far, gravitational waves from 10 black hole mergers have been detected by the LIGO and VIRGO collaboration. But, despite this success in the detection of gravitational waves, scientists are still trying to explain the origins of the stellar-mass black hole mergers that emitted them.
This conundrum is further complicated by the fact that the largest merger detected thus far has defied previous models concerning such events— possessing both a higher spin and mass above the range that scientists had believed possible.
