Two giant black holes are expected to collide and shake spacetime, as Einstein predicted

Astronomers have discovered two oversized black holes 99% of their way into a violent collision that will shake the web of space-time itself.

The black holes, named PKS 2131-021, are trapped in a “dance of destruction” about 9 billion light-years from Earth, according to a study published Feb. 23 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The two objects have been moving steadily toward each other for about 100 million years, according to NASA, and now orbit one hole around the other every two years or so.

About 10,000 years from now, the two black holes will merge, sending gravitational waves into the space-time web, according to Albert Einstein, the researchers said.

Oversized black holes are extremely dark, dense objects that are hundreds of millions of times more massive than the Sun and are at the heart of most, if not all, galaxies in the universe.

Astronomers do not know how these objects become so large, but one possible explanation is that the largest black holes in the universe result from a fusion of two smaller black holes, according to NASA. The new study may help confirm this hypothesis.

The study authors were observing the brightness of about 1,800 blazars scattered throughout the universe when they noticed something strange. The brightness of the blazar PKS 2131-021 fluctuated at regular intervals – so predictable, in fact, that the researchers likened the fluctuations to clockwork.

The researchers suspected that these fluctuations were the result of a second black hole pulling the first one as the two objects orbited each other about every two years, but the team needed more data to see how long this lasted.

The researchers looked at 45-year-old data from five observatories. If the findings are confirmed, PKS 2131-021 will be the second pair of binary black holes ever discovered.

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