Posted: Feb 21, 2012 4:08 pm
Pulsar wrote:Surely the collision of two BHs is extremely rare. I imagine that such events could happen in a binary system of massive stars (and a collision wouldn't happen for billions of years); also, the central supermassive BHs of two colliding galaxies might merge, but again, such an event is very rare in the present-day universe. Other than that, space is just too big for a chance encounter between two BHs.
For one thing, it only has to happen once, and,bingo, here we are, and for another, you're thinking of BHs in this universe, which only formed well after atoms, so that it's hard for them to find each other. If cosmology is as described in my OP, our universe is a BH in a much bigger, more massive one, in which gravitational collapse of a body within that universe can come before atoms.
In any case, I don't see how two colliding BHs have something to do with dark energy.
Again, if you read my OP, I am challenging that orthodoxy. I realise that there is a certtain amouint of speculation involved, but I see no reason why falling into each others' gravitational well shouldn't result in a form of energy conversion that leads to more zero-point energy in each BH, ie, more space. (Of course, it requires that a BH be as per my version of loop quantum gravity, which has nothing to do with universes. You have to rethink everything, but still apply the principles of physics in some way that makes sense.)