Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan
The difference with pair of BH's is, if they are mutually interacting in in very close proximity, relativity effects start to play tricks, resulting in unstable orbits, long term (unlike with Newtonian gravity where orbits are stable - unless there are more than two players).
But if they are not too close, relativity effects are the same as for stars.. so that is why I am puzzled by those controversies mentioned in links I provided earlier.
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Not speaking as an expert, but isn't the point that they are in a globular cluster?
As I understand it, GC's are extremely old. This means that they have had a very long time for massive objects to fall toward their center, hence their spherical appearance, with high star density concentrated, in the center and heavily dependent on radius. The expectation then would be that black holes would have long since grown large, fallen to the center and coalesced. The fact that this hasn't happened is a bit odd.
As I understand it, the degree to which we don't understand how black holes interact with their surroundings is already fairly high. Last time I checked, we still don't understand how galactic central black holes can swallow enough material to produce typical radio jets - too much angular momentum in the orbiting material and no obvious way of getting rid of it.
