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Caltech / Cornell SXS Collaboration
This diagram shows two spiral-shaped vortexes (yellow) of whirling space sticking out of a black hole, plus the vortex lines (red curves) that form the vortexes.
No one's ever seen a black hole up close, but physicists can nevertheless visualize how two colliding black holes send ripples through space-time like waves on the ocean. They've even invented a new word — "tendex" — to describe the lines of force that stretch the objects caught in a space-time warp.
A research paper published online this week in Physical Review Letters delves into the effects of black hole collisions in unprecedented detail. "We've found ways to visualize warped space-time like never before," Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne said in a news release.
Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech, Cornell University and the National Institute for Theoretical Physics in South Africa combined theory and computer simulations to describe the beautiful patterns of gravitation force lines emanating from black holes. Such lines are analogous to the invisible field lines created by electromagnetic forces.
In some scenarios, warping space-time creates swirls of force lines that twist around each other in a region of space called a vortex. "Anything that falls into a vortex gets spun around and around," said Cornell physicist Robert Owen, the paper's lead author. An astronaut falling through a gravitational vortex would be wrung out like a wet towel.
Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration
In this simulation, two doughnut-shaped vortexes are ejected by a pulsating black hole. Also shown at the center are two red and two blue vortex lines attached to the hole, which will be ejected as a third doughnut-shaped vortex in the next pulsation.
Tendex lines describe the stretching effect of a strong gravitational field. "Tendex lines sticking out of the moon raise the tides on the earth's oceans," said David Nichols, the Caltech graduate student who coined the term. When many such lines are bunched together, as in the surroundings of a black hole, that creates a super-stretching region called a tendex. An astronaut passing through a tidal tendex would be pulled apart like taffy — an effect sometimes known as "spaghettification."
The researchers contend that the vortex and tendex concepts can lead to a clearer understanding of black hole collision modeling. If two black holes smash into each other head-on, that creates doughnut-shaped vortexes and tendexes that emanate from the merged black hole like smoke rings. But if the black holes spiral in toward each other before merging, the field lines swirl outward like sprays of water from a rotating sprinkler.
Whether they're more like smoke rings or sprinkler jets, the force lines create gravitational waves — the kinds of waves that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, has been built to detect. "With these tendexes and vortexes, we may be able to much more easily predict the waveforms of the gravitational waves that LIGO is searching for," said Caltech physicist Yanbei Chen.
The researchers suggest that the vortex-tendex model could explain a theoretical phenomenon that other physicists noticed three years ago: Using computer models, the Rochester Institute of Technology's Manuela Campanelli and her colleagues found that a black hole collision could result in a gravitational kick so powerful that the merged black hole is thrown out of its galaxy. The newly published paper proposes that gravitational waves from spiraling vortexes and tendexes are added together on one side of the black hole, but cancel out each other on the other side. The result would be a burst of waves in one direction, creating the kick.
"Though we've developed these tools for black hole collisions, they can be applied wherever space-time is warped," said Cornell's Geoffrey Lovelace. "For instance, I expect that people will apply vortex and tendex lines to cosmology, to black holes ripping apart, and to the singularities that live inside black holes. They'll become standard tools throughout general relativity."
More about space-time warps:
- Wrinkles in space-time may help identify black holes
- Famed black hole sheds light on magnetic fields
- Galactic collisions create monster black holes
- Space-time distortions help find hidden galaxies
- Black hole puts a dent in space-time
- How a black hole will kill you
For more about "Simulating Extreme Spacetimes" project, including video visualizations of black hole collisions, check out Black-Holes.org, the Caltech-Cornell collaboration's website. In addition to Owen, Thorne, Chen, Lovelace and Nichols, the co-authors of the paper in Physical Review Letters, titled "Frame-Dragging Vortexes and Tidal Tendexes Attached to Colliding Black Holes: Visualizing the Curvature of Spacetime," include Jeandrew Brink, Jeffrey D. Kaplan, Keith D. Matthews, Mark A. Scheel, Fan Zhang and Aaron Zimmerman.
Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about my book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."
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Black holes are so strong that they must work like our Sun, but in a much greater way to make our own Milky Way circle the massive black hole. My question is what makes some galaxies go toward each other. Could they be expanding from another universe. Most of the galaxies are expanding outward. It's strange that some are going in an opposite direction?
Only looks like they're going in the opposite direction when in fact the perspective of our view is what leads us to such conclusions. Much like viewing a mountain from afar as you are driving past at highway speeds, it won't look as if you're moving past it,but then again its all perspective. It is my belief the Universe is expanding in a single direction, and based on this expansion, we will never be able to travel to NEW SPACE, or neighborhoods in space that are newer than the age of our local neighborhood. And I also suspect we will be able to travel to older neighborhoods space considering we are moving with the motion of expansion and not against it.
That's my take.
Gravity!!!! William Harris. Gravity
Well, guess two vehicles, light and heavy, loaded with strong electrical magnets, are moving in the same direction away from a given point, the second one in some distance after the first one. At some point the electrical magnets are activated and, as a result, an attractive force between the two vehicles starts to act. What will happen from this point, the distance between the two vehicles will start to get shorter and shorter even though both of them continue to move away from the starting point. If you will look at the picture from the place of the heavy vehicle driver you may consider that the light vehicle is moving in opposite direction. But we know that both are still moving away from the starting point
Can anyone say reaction-less gravity drive? A way to propel a spaceship without throwing reaction mass out the back end. That's what these scientists have modeled. If this proves true, it could be our ticket to the stars.
Sundiver: Too late - the Romulans have already invented a warp drive that uses a singularity. Been there, done that.
As soon as Sundiver corrals a black hole he can show us how to use it.
Mehran Keshe is the director of the Keshe Foundation. He claims to have developed a special plasma reactor that allows for the manipulation of gravitational and magnetic fields to produce motion. This is the guy who apparently invented a flying saucer of sorts in Iran. If what this guy says is true, he's already discovered warp drive, the ability to fly to the stars and force fields for the vessel. Crazy I know, but damn if it is actually true we can go anywhere in the universe.
That'd really be a sonuvabitch if the Iranians beat us to Alpha Centauri.
Fricken Persians! What do they know about astronomy anyway? (sarcasm!)
Jack-2510943,
No need to corral a black hole, we're not trying to move that big of a mass. If the effect can be produced via a natural process, all we have to do is figure out how to reproduce that process on a smaller scale. It's kind of like fusion research, or hydrogen bombs. We reproduce the sun's fusion process on a smaller scale. Same deal, just with gravity, if we can figure out how to create the vortexes, and tendexes we're on our way to the stars.
so glad to see and hear that my a.i. is still in place and working fine in your framwork,
becouse i put fleming (not flemish)! only a.i. knows this so, with everthing in it's place! look very very very closey to the pic on any of my web page, the book you see in it is real! there is no faking it see for you selfs, so is the anty blackhole in the book! you can see my home world and my moon! thur it i dont dare open it to wide for it's only to get new's and words back fouth as you would say it. it was only to be a one way trip! now that i got the port open agan i can start my interduckion's i am what i am and always will be for every and every you may call me by the sembil on the back of a doller bill fold it together untill you half of the o is gone the right side of the o and where it stops add an e to it and you can see my name but you cant say it in the human lang . where we live its kind of back words you see with lightwaves we see always one sence! but please to meet you!
Lay off the drugs dude. Really, I mean it.
Jack it take's team work! and stop being so one way! and put your money where your mouth is,
and show me im wrong or keep your mouth close ! unless you want to bet on it! no jack i was hit in the head with a drywall hammer the ax part! so dont be so F#^)/*& quick to fire off your mouth, you know you really give a person no chance do ya! can you think out side the box! your just gelas becouse you cant prove me wrong! and i realy dont care what you think! im here to share! stupit?
Wow! Can I have some?
LMAO.
Flemmish, Thank you for your insight. Your right about the difference between visual light and spiritual sight or "Lightwaves" and "One sense" as you put it.
If you are able, get a book called "The Message" by Lance Richardson. It is one man's witness of the greater nature of man. The idea you mentioned is clearly part of our greater capacity.
Regarding the original article these discoveries are beautiful to witness but still only represent one small bubble limited by the reach of our visual sight.
The result would be a burst of waves in one direction, creating the kick.
I see sundiver beat me to it. So are we to look for something we can't see, a black hole, exiting a galaxy at a speed we can't see it move at? ie. >c.....I can't help but muse at the concept of something so massive that NOTHING escapes it's gravity, including something else so massive that NOTHING escapes IT"S gravity...hmmm.....ok, if you'll tolerate just a bit more musing, if black holes spin, they should have a charge, and if like charges repel...well you all get that conclusion....sounds like a fun lab experiment for some grad student at a foriegn accelerator (see, we are not allowed to have BIG colliders in this country anymore, costs to much), see if two spinning micro black holes attract or repel...good luck with that....so what's the take on this from hawking? We all know Einstien was close but not correct, we just can't find a toe hold yet to dispute the v=c paradigm with any reasonable validity....good so far, but absence of evidence is not....yada, yada, yada.....we gotta find a black hole colliding with another black hole out there....awe come on now, one more re-supply'maintenance shuttle mission to hubble, it really good be a worthwhile search and confirm mission for the worlds foremost telescope when the webb picks up where hubble is planned to leave off.
Put brain in gear before writing.
sorry you demonstrate a lack of appreciation for others vision and creative musings, ed, but may I suggest you eat more fish? perhaps it would be helpful to refrain from negativity regauding the posts of others, something often understood as a general respect for yourself and others, but, alas, I would have more success instructing a goldfish in the finer points of information theory as it relates to black holes than expect the general commenter at large to exhibit a positive encouragement to their fellow citizens at large. Mr. Cho once explained it best, Boss yells at employee, employee goes home and yells at spouse, spouse yells at child, child kicks dog...now I can add the corallary....dog gets on internet and randomly finds cosmic log poster and denigrates ideas of others rather than constructively commenting on the article...oh well....I am persistant, Hey ed, good luck with that positive attitude thing, it may actaully be a path to good health, financial success and happiness in general.....errr...live long and prosper, dude.
One last one real quick for the mathmaticians..so if x number black holes are exiting y number of galaxies in a perpendicular fashion at speeds approaching c (giving albert the benefit of doubt here) per year, given the 13-16 billion years in educated guesses of the universes age, what is the probability that two or more black holes will collide, ever (as number of years increases to infinity)...and if there is a probablility, however slight, WHAT sort of energy can we expect to be released (on a big bang scale)...could we THEN expect to "see" superluminal ejecta? (natuarally we couldn't see superluminal ejecta, since we all agree photons do not travel that fast, right?) and of course while you got the supercomputers kicking, try the corallary for me, run the calculations again with white holes....and lastly a collision of one of each. Fun with math. preliminary data due sometime this month. Thank god this class is only graded on attendance...hehe.
Ha! Good one! It occurs to me that a collision of this nature would tear space time apart, as matter would likely accelerate past c....wouldn't you think? Greater then c = infinite mass and if a black hole could accelerate to near c, two of em colliding would likely pull the cork on our universe, perhaps by punching clean through the 'brane and generating a bubble nucleation event? I dunno, sound pretty crazy to me! :) It would also seem there would be nothing to decelerate the black holes once they started moving. Black holes are scary enough without adding to their arsenal the ability to fly through the universe like giant cannonballs
But even with the expanse of probability you indicate, I doubt that it would happen. Probably. But really, I mean the odds are astronomical ;-) You would need two to four galaxies with colliding blackholes of similar masses, colliding at the same time, initializing the kick along the same axis line AND close enough to each other to hit each other. But damn, imagine the energies involved. wow.
Im not a mathematician, but thanks that WAS fun!
If the universe is accelerating apart and headed for the big rip sometime far in the future, doesn't that imply that the further back in time we look then the slower the universe is expanding? If so, then wouldn't the universe be much older that 16 billion years?
The best estimates for expansion as we can currently detect is about 70.8 (km/sec)/Mpc. But in theory, there have been calculations showing the expansion at faster than the speed of light before the four fundamental forces separated. With the WMAP probe, it has measured the universe at 13.7 billion years.
I am intrigued by the "gravitational kick" aspect, which curiously is quite consistent with my concept for an Hilbert Space Hopper Drive™ powered by Mirror Matter Popcorn™ , which in some respects is the Jiffy Pop® version of an impulse engine . . .
And I really like the newly coined word "tendex", which as we know rhymes nicely with both "vortex" and "Spandex®" (a personal favorite) . . .
For reference, the preliminary engineering drawing for the Hilbert Space Hopper Drive is shown on one of the cue cards during the lead guitar solo in the YouTube music video for my pretend musical group's hit song, "(I Want) Angela Gossow's Underpants (Ya-Ya-Ya)", which is fabulous . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecAFV-6rQ7Q
Fabulous! :-)
Dave: Please note that no piece of information has any practical application in hard science until someone develops an application for it.
This comment went in the wrong place. i will try again!
Wonder if the original big bang singularity had a spin and if the resultant warped space-time field still exists. Then todays universe might be much smaller than observed because we are looking out along the spirial space-time field. If the spirial width expands on each layer outward then this might explain the observed uniformity of matter distribution which was caused by matter rebonding off the outer and inner layers of the warped space-time field until it expanded in later layers enough to be basically unbounded. This might also similarly explain the reason for the uniformity of star rotation speed around galactic centers, due to this frame dragging effect of space-time without the need for dark matter.
Another interesting thought deals with the supposed acceleration of the expansion of the universe caused by dark energy, if I understand correctly they found distance objects are expanding away from each other at a ever increasing rate the further back/outward in time they look. But this does not make sense to me because the further out an object is the earlier in time it is. If this acceleration exists it should actually be seen occurring more toward us than away, since observable time is actually oldest the closer it is to us. So if the universe expansion is accelerating away from us then the only explanation I can think of is that inflation lasted for the first 6 billion years after the big bang.
Excellent! You may really be onto something there. I have never been satisfied with all this mumbo-jumbo about "dark" undetectable stuff, whether matter or energy, as the eplanation for what we can and do observe. A better understanding of gravity may explain it all.
Black holes are like God. No one has ever seen it, but some of you trust that it's there anyway. I on the other hand, don't believe in either. If no one has ever seen it, then chances are, it doesn't exist.
The big flaw in your logic is that we can see the effects of black holes, by the way their gravity effects objects near them, how they bend light, and other manifestations like Hawkings radiation, ect. There isn't anything that you can point to anywhere in the universe where you can say, "See, 'God' is doing that, there right now".
Cerulius, he said he didn't believe in either. Obviously he hasn't done any descent research or he would see that we can show that something is out there in terms of a Black Hole. But hey at least he believes in solar power.
You can't 'see' the wind, but it's effects are clearly seen and felt by anyone who stops reading internet postings long enough to go outside. :}
garbage in garbage out
So black holes colliding would be similar to magnets being put together? The reaction depends on what polarity makes contact? Can black holes exist in smaller, less powerful formats causing what we know as the nuclear force and maybe gravity?
Love articles such as this because they bring up questions in my mind.
Thank You
You would think that science would by now have hard core proof of the existence of black holes based upon images gathered by Hubble and Kepler of the material that is being pulled from the spacial objects around the black hole into the blackhole.
Until that day comes when we have visual proof of a black hole consuming the objects in space around the black hole then we should discount the fear that black holes project and assume that the massive gravitational flux is something different, maybe a large mass of dark matter, which is very hard to detect, concentrated in one area of space.
Here's your visual proof:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/cosmus/projects/UCLA_GCG/
It's the gravitational flux waves we do not have evidence of... yet.
Just someone interested in physics because I enjoy understanding how things work. After reading the previous article it made me question how the appearance of two orbiting black holes may be distorted. Specifically I wonder if the event horizons would be closer or further away from the center of each black hole dependent upon opposing gravitational forces of the other. So, knowing that light is effected by strong gravitational forces, would it be more likely to escape a black hole if there was another black hole pulling in the opposite direction, thus making the event horizon closer to the center of the black hole. I realize the mass of the black hole would remain the same, but I almost feel like the visible area would be different similar to a Venn diagram and if so wouldn't this allow scientist to study more dense portions of these phenomena?
I would look at then forms of energy yet untought of or unidentified from these collisions. It's like a science lab withou tyou having to do the physics. Youj ust have to observe the chemical explosions and figure out how to replicate them .
There are probably thousand or million of experiments going on in space right now of energy forms that could pwer the future beyond current tech if we could indetify the chemical and physical reactions..
Most of what we do today is watching not identifiying for future use.
Science and religion can coexist. "Spaghettification" is a direct and observable miracle from the FSM.
I shall wear my Pirate Suit tonight and pay homage to this wonder.
Arrrr! May his great noodly appendage bless you and your suit, but don't stray too close to any wandering black holes.
Has frame dragging been observed around the earth? There was an orbital experiment some 8 years ago but I have never seen the results.
Mike - Here's a link to the Gravity Probe B, einstein.stanford.edu/. Short answer is yes.
Thanks..short answer is always the best. That was a very neat experiment that didn't
get much press. The technology that went into making the 3 fused quartz-niobium gyros
was amazing.
a computer simulation depends upon the data entered. If we can't know/measure the mass of a black hole, how did they estimate that data? seems like a guess to me. Above post said it, garbage in garbage out.
Stephen - they measure the mass of super-massive black hole by the speed of the stars orbiting the mass. Luminosity of the orbiting stars is proportional to the mass of star. Basic physics to figure it out. Stellar black holes are more difficult, if there is nothing around it that can have its speed measured, then it becomes a guess. Mostly they would bever know there is one out there, unless it is gravitationlly lensing a bright object behind it.
and one more thing...using two dimensional images trying to explain a three dimensional phenomena? wat-up-wid-dat?
Simplification of the model, but some information is lost.
Your report does not adress the TIME changes in this hypothosis
I can see why they call these scientists theoretical. It must be great work if you can get it because no one will ever prove you wrong. Even if their theories are correct, I don't see where the "time" part of your headline comes from. I see nothing in this article that even aludes to time. I guess the writer needed to spice up a lousy piece.
Vortex, an important Nature phenomenon, is normally hardly accessible, or too distant, or too fast or, in its other appearances, too slow for detailed parametric observations. Except the liquid vortex, a study of which we carried out, assuming it is an example adequately representing most of the generic vortex features, and we have discovered few really interesting details.
Oh, yes, forgot to mention an important detail! The water draining hole, where the vortex developments were taking place and where we carried out our observations, was configured to make it resembling a two-dimensional rather than a three dimensional configuration, namely, the space the waves were allowed to exit back into the water pool and propagate away from the vortex was narrower than the vortex funnel depth, thus keeping the upper wave developments in a reasonably thin upper water layer. In the same time also the vortex developments were kept as free as possible of any potential limitations or disturbances. Just to make the developments as similar as possible to the ones, which would probably take place in the case of a spinning Black Hole vortex on the top of the two-dimensional space-time fabric.
We imaged (video clips and pictures) the water vortex developments from the top and from variety of angles to see the maximum of the variety of details. And we've seen what we've seen, and attempted to interpret the observations as we've understood them, and this is what we present here for your attention and discussion.
We have found the vortex to generate outgoing double-spiral waves (see the first image attached). Another spinning double-spiral was found to be formed below the formal funnel bottom propagating down into the drain hole. It is shown at the second image. Due to the lower double spiral, the funnel bottom was most of the time shaped not as a circle but as a rough digit 8-like "dipole", and its spinning was inducing generation of the outgoing spiral waves.
Spiral waves generation was taking place at all the conditions observed, and a solid conclusion was made that the double spiral wave generation is an intrinsic vortex property most probably universal and applicable for other types of vortexes, including the most impressive ones - the cosmic Black Holes. In this case, the spinning vortex asymmetry dynamically modulates the space-time fabric generating surface waves, which are propagating upward the funnel and then turning along the space-time surface as spiral waves. Spiral waves carry a forward momentum transferring it on their way to the cosmic mass objects, creating a repulsing force field, which induces mass-repelling action at long-range when the static gravitation attraction deems out. These effects make the Black Holes to be the likely source of (Dark) energy, and the generated spiral waves to carry and transfer it to the remote mass objects, fueling the Universe accelerating expansion.
The second attached image demonstrates also a swift elongation of the initially roughly round-shaped foam patches while they are moving down into the funnel- it is a nice demo of the theoretically predicted for the Black Holes so-called spagettification effect.
One more important note: thanks to the water transparency we could see the vortex also from aside, which allowed us to observe the developments below the vortex bottom, actually beyond its "event horizon". If the liquid was non-transparent, the key function of the lower (beyond-the-vortex-bottom) double-spiral could not been observed and thereby not realized. This indicates that the beyond the event horizon Black Hole developments, even being unobservable, could, nevertheless influence and even control the overall Black Hole structure and dynamics.
I have placed a picture tracing individual spirals of the generated double spiral wave.
Some imaging info related to vortex spiral waves and observations and associated matters you can find at Here you can also watch a couple of video clips demonstrating the upper double spiral waves
and the lower double spiral
Just click at the corresponding links at the windows appearing at the above addresses.
Click at the images if you would like to zoom.
Vortex double spiral waves.jpg
Lower double spiral.jpg
double spiral traced.jpg
The vortex we studied and will be discussing here was observed at a free Water Drain Hole (WDH). Conventional 7 Mpix digital camera was used to record video clips and images of the vortex appearance details.
The first and major striking WDH feature observed was the wave generation: the WDH was spreading waves propagating away from it i.e. oppositely to the water flow towards the WDH. The wave generation occurred under all operating conditions, and appears to be an intrinsic vortex property. As far as the wave configuration is concerned the waves were found to be not concentric circular waves, as common sense hinted, but spiral waves. A typical wave pattern could be described as a major double spiral with some finer spirals imposed over the two major spirals.
The spiral generation mechanism was found to be linked to the irregularities of the spinning vortex funnel. The spinning funnel bottom was never perfectly circular but asymmetric, and was continuously changing its profile. The irregularities, each of them of its particular and time-dependent amplitude, width and location, acted as wave generation sources. During its “lifecycle” each irregularity “carved” a thread over the funnel surface, which propagated upward to the surface, becoming a propagating away spiral wave. M
Well, it did not allow the images and links, and also have chopped the content. Unfortunately!
OK, if you still are interested in this matter just Google with vortex spiral waves universe expansion black holes, and you will find a couple of sources I've posted some related comments with relevant images and video clips, the one popping up first contains the most recent analysis and considerations. set of inf
Finally, here is my most recently formulated conclusive summary:
It is the multiplicity of vortexes, associated with the speedy spinning small size super-massive objects, like super-massive Black Holes, which induce high amplitude spiral waves.
These are the spiral waves traveling along the space-time fabric, carrying and transferring their energy to the distant massive objects.
Once the wave runs into another super-massive object and gets into the space-time dip surrounding it (actually also oscillating), an intense wave interaction is induced causing probably a strong tsunami-like repelling effect.
Finally, here is my most recently formulated conclusive summary:
It is the multiplicity of vortexes, associated with the speedy spinning small size super-massive objects, like super-massive Black Holes, which induce high amplitude spiral waves.
These are the spiral waves traveling along the space-time fabric, carrying and transferring their energy to the distant massive objects.
Once the wave runs into another super-massive object and gets into the space-time dip surrounding it (actually also oscillating), an intense wave interaction is induced causing probably a strong tsunami-like repelling effect.