When black holes merge

Web extras -- full cover story by Adam Frank (University of Rochester) to appear in the September 2008 issue of the Astronomy Magazine.

Numerical relativity researcher Manuela Campanelli describes the culminating moments of the merger of two black holes.

by Daniel Pendick

Manuela Campanelli, the director of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation (CCRG), heads of group of researchers who simulate the merger of black holes in a supercomputer. Here is Campanelli providing a running description of such a merger — the same one featured in  “How astronomers cracked the Einstein code” (September 2008).

Animation: Hans-Peter Bischof/CCRG