Black Hole Collisions: What Happens?

[James Leighe]

DaveC-
Thanks for the response. I have another question regarding the gravitational field of the black hole. If the mass increases (say, from merging with another black hole), doesn't that increase the strength of the gravitational field as a whole, relative to the distance from the black hole? For instance, if a star was x distance from the black hole, and the gravitational field was some arbitrarily small measure of force from overcoming the star's inertia and "sucking it in," and the BH's mass increased, wouldn't this mean that the gravitational strength at x distance would increase? And if so, wouldn't the star be drawn into the black hole, increasing its mass and thus expanding its gravitational field (relative to distance of course) in the same way again? This is what I meant by a runaway effect.

First of all you have been answered in many different ways so make sure you read all of what we have said and ask specific questions as to what you did not understand about our explanations.

I'll answer it again, the answer is no.

Think about it like this, I have two peas next to each other and a meter away from an orange all sitting on a table. The orange feels some small gravitational effect from each pea, and since the peas are next to each other you can say, "The orange is feeling two peas worth of gravity in blah direction (the direction of the peas)". Now, mash the peas together, the orange still only feels the attraction of two peas. There is no extra gravity.

The peas can be distant black holes in our example and the orange can be any massive body.

Also, the field is not 'expanded' as I have explained in my previous post.

 

[pzona]

Alright I think I understand. I was completely ignoring the fact that each black hole exerts its own gravitational force; I was only considering one black hole, and ignoring the other one until the point at which they merge. A pretty big error, I admit. I haven't taken a physics course since junior year of high school, so I'm a little (actually a lot) rusty on it. Thanks to everyone for your patience.