Ask Astro: What would happen if two supermassive black holes merged?

Aaron James Oommen

Doha, Qatar

Supermassive black holes that are millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun are commonly found at the hearts of galaxies. When galaxies merge, their central black holes should also combine. And when they do, these collisions are so powerful that they create distortions in space-time, known as gravitational waves. These ripples were first theorized by Albert Einstein in his theory of gene