Most "Two Black Holes to merge" stories go like this, from Space.com:
The two black holes dance around each other at the center of the galaxy NGC 7727, located some 89 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Scientists say they have never seen such a pair so close to our planet, but also so close to each other.
The black hole couple, which will merge into one giant black hole 250 million years from now...
That's not exactly a testable prediction, is it?
Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this article on Inverse:
ASTRONOMERS ARE WATCHING THE SKIES, waiting for two cosmic giants to collide. In a galaxy located 1.2 billion light years from Earth, a pair of black holes could potentially be engaged in a gravitational tango, pulling closer to one another until they merge as one supermassive black hole.
This could occur as soon as 100 days, or up to three years from now*.
The chaps at LIGO and VIRGO have got a lot riding on this. So far they have been marking their own homework, although their output has the ring of truth to me. Equally, they could be pulling a massive scam like all the scientists wasting billions on Dark Matter detectors.
So, let's hope that Huang Nang and Ning Jiyang are in the right ball park and that the merger can be detected by LIGO and VIRGO. That's both parties vindicated and we'll learn something new, or have some existing theory corroborated. Or possibly red faces all round, but we've still learned something.
* Of course, either this event happened - or didn't happen - 1.2 billion years ago, but from our point of view, it hasn't happened yet.
Debate Magazine
