#knowember: “The intricate dance of wobbling binary black holes” (talk in English)

Black holes are enigmatic objects that are also quite weird. When two of them get together in a binary, they circle each other and emit gravitational waves. This causes the orbit to shrink, eventually leading to a spectacular collision of the two black holes. If the black holes are rotating at the same time, this sets off an intricate dance between the black holes, causing the orbit to wobble like a top. All of this is imprinted on the emitted gravitational waves, which we can observe directly on Earth! Vijay Varma will talk about what happens when these wobbling black holes collide and how we can uncover the secrets of black hole astrophysics by observing their gravitational wave signals.