Tau.Neutrino said:
14% of all the Massive Stars in the Universe are Destined to Collide as Black Holes
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity predicted that black holes would form and eventually collide. It also predicted the creation of gravitational waves from the collision. But how often does this happen, and can we calculate how many stars this will happen to?
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14%?
That’s a much larger percentage than I expected. Black holes are tiny, the chance of two colliding is very much smaller than the probability of two main sequence stars colliding, because a main sequence star is 33,000 times bigger and even main sequence stars collide very rarely. In M30, a very dense cluster of stars, there have been 280 star collisions in 160,000 stars.
So take 280, divide it by 160,000, multiply it by 2 because these stars are only half way through their life, divide it by 33,000, then divide it by 100 for the relative density of stars in the core of M30 vs those in a galaxy.
That gives one ten millionth of 1% for of the proportion of “all the Massive Stars in the Universe Destined to Collide as Black Holes”.
Rather than 14%.