back to article Let's grow a baby universe in a supercomputer, watch black holes collide

Physicists have created simulations that predict the rate at which gravitational waves from the collision of monstrous supermassive black holes may be detected. The results are due to be announced later today at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting. In a monumental discovery, gravitational waves were …

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      1. asdf

        Re: buzz killington spoiler

        point taken

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: buzz killington spoiler

      Imagine someone doing something similar, but at a larger scale - dropping asteroids on continents...

      But I digress. As I probably won't fully understand the initial paper, does anyone here know about the resolution (if that is the correct term in this context) and the iteration cycles? In other words, how big is the smallest element? How much virtual time lies between each iterational step?

  2. John Mangan

    I have a question . . .

    "They are predicted to have formed in the early universe from massive dense clouds that collapsed straight into black holes without forming any stars and galaxies beforehand"

    I have seen this mentioned a number of times recently and I'm wondering how is this supposed to happen? My vague memories suggest that as the gas collapses it heats, nuclear fusion starts, radiation slows the inflow of matter (or dissipates it into the outer reaches of the 'system'. Does this model depend on matter falling in such large volumes and so rapidly that it snuffs out the nascent star?

    1. Ken Strain

      Re: I have a question . . .

      @John Mangan. I asked some astrophysicist colleagues about this. Essentially the collapse without forming a star can only happen if there is no pressure, which requires collapsing dust, rather than gas (so it won't happen as far as we know). If there is gas the collapse happens just as you say, heating up and forming a star on the way to a black hole, at least in every scenario we could think of.

      ps. Rgds from JimH, HarryW, DaveR.

  3. g e

    And somewhere within the simulation...

    Is an Elon Musk saying 'We're living inside a simulation'

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