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I've been thinking about black holes, specifically during the final moments before two merge. I'm wondering if black holes, or I guess more specifically their event horizons, are always spherical. It seems to me that in the moments before two merge, their respective event horizons will be stretched, somewhat like how the Moon causes our ocean's tides. I have drawn a (poor) diagram of what I think they may look like. Notice how the event horizons are closer to the singularity on the inner side, this is because the gravity from each black hole is in opposition. The event horizons are further from the singularity on the outer side because the gravity from each black hole adds up. enter image description here

Florin Andrei
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Ryan_L
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2 Answers2

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No need to guess. There's solid research done in this field. Even Wikipedia has some info:

As two black holes approach each other, a ‘duckbill’ shape protrudes from each of the two event horizons towards the other one. This protrusion extends longer and narrower until it meets the protrusion from the other black hole. At this point in time the event horizon has a very narrow X-shape at the meeting point. The protrusions are drawn out into a thin thread. The meeting point expands to a roughly cylindrical connection called a bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_black_hole#Shape

There are research papers with images showing the results of calculations of the shape of the event horizons during merger. Here's an example:

enter image description here

The image above is taken from this paper:

On Toroidal Horizons in Binary Black Hole Inspirals

We examine the structure of the event horizon for numerical simulations of two black holes that begin in a quasicircular orbit, inspiral, and finally merge. We find that the spatial cross section of the merged event horizon has spherical topology (to the limit of our resolution), despite the expectation that generic binary black hole mergers in the absence of symmetries should result in an event horizon that briefly has a toroidal cross section.

Florin Andrei
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    +1 Lovely pictures. I appreciate how the xyz-axes in the corners contribute absolutely nothing. –  May 22 '19 at 14:16
  • @user28113: The black holes started on the YZ plane. – Joshua May 22 '19 at 15:40
  • I think you mean XZ plane... but yeah, they really don't add anything useful haha. – Noldorin May 22 '19 at 17:04
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    @user28113 The coordinates make sense in the context of the simulation described in the paper. These are the actual results of numeric analysis - not "an artist's impression" of the phenomenon. – Florin Andrei May 22 '19 at 17:59
  • The diagram seems to assume that a black hole is rubber-like; a rubber sphere, if you will. I only point this out because most here assert that a black hole isn't solid in any way (bar, I assume, the alleged singularity), and that you wouldn't even know if you passed the event horizon. So, are black holes rubbery spheres or what, mate? With all due respect. – White Prime May 22 '19 at 19:46
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    @WhitePrime Black holes are basically just powerfully distorted spacetime. At the singularity our math blows up so it's pointless to talk much about that. The event horizon is the boundary where things get different in many ways - but it's not a line drawn in the sand, nor is it a "solid object". It's more like the Equator - you know it's there, you can measure and calculate it, but there is no white line on the ground that says "Equator". The shape of the event horizon is influenced by rotation, other massive bodies nearby, etc. It would be spherical for a static, isolated black hole. – Florin Andrei May 22 '19 at 19:57
  • @Florin Andrei But, in descriptions of black hole mergers, it's always asserted that they 'wobble' before quickly regaining shape. – White Prime May 22 '19 at 20:33
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    @WhitePrime They do, yes. But rubber balls are not the only things that can "wobble". Spacetime itself can wobble. Particles in a magnetic trap could wobble. Entire universes could wobble if conditions are right. "Wobbling" simply means there's a force that opposes a deformation, and it brings the system back to the initial point, but it overshoots and is deformed in the opposite direction, and then it's brought back again, etc. Many things can do this. – Florin Andrei May 22 '19 at 22:26
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    Square smoke rings wobble. As for the boundary that is called the event horizon, it is simply the demarcation of a region of space inside of which we, being on the outside, cannot assign a "when" to any event that occurs on the inside. Stuff happens in there, but we'd need to wait an infinite amount of time to see it. – Draco18s no longer trusts SE May 23 '19 at 02:37
  • FWIW, there's a nice image and a short but gorgeous video of a simulated merger here, courtesy of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. However, that sim makes a couple of major simplifications, as mentioned in the text. – PM 2Ring May 23 '19 at 07:48
  • But if black holes distort spacetime, then XYZ axes really don't mean anything at all. :’’’( – biziclop May 23 '19 at 09:50
  • @FlorinAndrei : You may need a different example than the Equator. – Eric Towers May 23 '19 at 10:07
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    @biziclop Not true. The distortions are not arbitrary, they can be calculated precisely. – Florin Andrei May 23 '19 at 16:13
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    @biziclop Because the planet's spherical, latitude and longitude lines on a map really don't mean anything at all. – wizzwizz4 May 23 '19 at 16:52
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    @user28113 This may well be an artifact of the program used to visualize the graph. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen May 24 '19 at 06:38
  • @FlorinAndrei BTW, there is a line on the ground marking the Equator, at the El Mitad Del Mundo monument in Ecuador. Huge tourist attraction: everyone wants a photo of them with one foot in each hemisphere! Unfortunately, some 260 years after the site was first marked, the advent of GPS revealed that the real exact 0° latitude is about 200m away... but there's now a line there too, at the Inti Nan museum :-) – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten May 24 '19 at 14:31
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From the question What can be learned from, or noted in this LIGO Orrery video? we can watch the video LIGO Orrery (which was inspired by the mind-blowing Kepler Orrery IV).

I've made a small, low quality GIF from screen shots here, the video is much more interesting.

It's been difficult to be sure what exactly is depicted as mentioned in this answer but it's likely the surfaces depict something at least a bit like an event horizon.

LIGO Orrery

uhoh
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