posted on Oct, 17 2018 @ 10:42 PM
originally posted by: kloejen
Q: What would happen if a supermassive black hole collided with a supermassive black hole of antimatter?
originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
phys.org - What if a black hole met an antimatter black hole?
It's not clear that black holes can be composed of either matter or anti-matter as we know it. We can say that matter or anti-matter went into the
black hole, but once inside the event horizon, the laws of physics as we know them break down so we can't say what form the mass has other than to say
it's more dense than the forms of matter and anti-matter we are familiar with, even more dense than a neutron star. One possibility is that the mass
inside a black hole does not come from any sort of matter at all, but is a form of energy. This is not so unthinkable when you realize that about 99%
of your own mass comes from energy, so why couldn't that be 100% inside a black hole?
So if the black hole is say some kind of highly dense form of energy inside, it's possible that it can't be classified as either matter or
anti-matter. Even if that's the case, the answer in the link that combining two black holes gives you a bigger black hole would remain true whether
they are made out of matter, energy, or whatever. According to the physics we think we do know they would combine their masses in any case. But we
just don't have physics to describe the state of matter or energy inside a black hole, though we know it's too dense to be made of the types of
baryonic matter or anti-matter we are familiar with.
What is a black hole made of?
The simple answer is that we don’t know. A black hole is defined as a region of spacetime from which extremely strong gravity prevents anything,
including light, from escaping.
We know that matter falling into black holes is no different from the matter which can be found lurking around the rest of the Universe. However, the
closer we get to the centre of a black hole, the faster our understanding of physics breaks down. Thanks to General Relativity, we think we understand
what happens in this extreme gravity and with the help of Quantum Mechanics, we can make an intelligent estimate as to what happens at smaller,
microscopic scales. But if the two theories are combined – like they would be at the centre of a black hole – they break down, leaving us with no
idea as to what’s going on!
To get around the problem, astrophysicists need a theory of gravity that is compatible with Quantum Mechanics that might just describe the physics
inside a black hole. At the moment though, no such model exists but physicists are working on it.
In addition to forming a larger black hole, the merger would likely distort space-time so if the black holes were massive enough and not too far away
we might detect gravitational waves from the merger. By Super Black hole I guess you mean supermassive, in which case the supermassive black holes at
the center of the Milky way and Andromeda galaxies are expected to merge in some billions of years. Unfortunately the Earth will no longer be able to
support life then or may not even exist, but if humans have colonized elsewhere and set up a gravitational wave detector, I imagine the results of
that merger will be spectacular, because the mass of the milky way's black hole is already huge at 4.1 million solar masses, but the mass of
Andromeda's black hole is thought to be at least 110 million solar masses and perhaps even twice that.
edit on 20181017 by Arbitrageur because: clarification