2/ I love every single thing about this idea… with one caveat. I’ll get to that.

Nutshell: When two black holes merge, despite blasting out incomprehensible amounts of energy (enumerated in the linked article), it’s a completely invisible event. No light is emitted.
3/ The energy is emitted in the form of gravitational waves. A blast of these was detected in May 2019, and triangulated to an area on the sky.

34 days later, in that same area, a galaxy not known for being variable suddenly brightened by an absurdly large amount.
4/ Were these events related? Astronomers think they may be. When the 2 black holes merged into 1 single BH, the tremendous blast of energy gave it a huge kick, sending it careening off in a different direction.

Now, that galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its center…
5/ If the remnant merged black hole was in orbit around the 3rd ,bigger one, it could have plunged through the huge disk of material swirling around it. That would generate a fearsome blast of energy, one so bright it sent chills down my spine.
6/ In just a few weeks it emitted as much energy as the Sun will OVER ITS ENTIRE LIFETIME. So yeah, bright.

Again I have details in the article linked in the OP, but it’s possible that’s why the flash happened 34 days later; it took that long for the BH to plunge thru the disk.
7/ And that’s how merging black holes, normally invisible, could blast out light. It’s not from he merger itself, but indirect effects of it.

And that brings me to my caveat from tweet 2: This is all circumstantial. The pieces all fit, but that doesn’t mean this is correct.
8/ The flash and the merger may be completely unrelated. They have happened billions of light years apart, but coincidentally in the same part of our sky. We just don’t know. But there may be a way to find out. If they’re connected, the astronomers predict another flash…
9/ …when the smaller BH plunges thru the disk *again*, since it would be in orbit around the far bigger BH. That could happen later this year, so they’re watching that galaxy, hoping to see it suddenly brighten again.

Pretty cool. It would be neat if they’re right.
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