With so much drama constantly happening on Earth, it’s easy to dismiss all of the interesting happenings that are going on in space.

If you’re so inclined, though, there’s plenty to take your mind off the day-to-day reality on this planet – and colliding black holes bring drama for days.

Gravitational waves are only sometimes observable to humans when gravity moves the wrinkled and warped fabric of space and time. We know from a revolutionary experiment in 2016 that when black holes, neutron stars, or other large objects collide in space, they also emit these waves.

Those waves, once thought simple, are now considered more complex.

Two new studies – one from Caltech and the other from Johns Hopkins – use computer models and reveal gravitational ripples playing off each other like waves crashing onto the shore.

Lead Caltech author Keefe Mitman explained more in a press release.

“Nonlinear effects are what happens when waves on the beach crest and crash. The waves interact and influence each other rather than ride along by themselves. With something as violent as a black hole merger, we expected these effects but had not seen them in our models until now.”

The studies focus on the “ringdown,” which is a particular part of the black hole merger that resembles the vibrations of a struck bell.

When the collision happens, two black holes temporarily form one that’s lumpy and unstable, and that shifting and settling is what releases the gravitational waves that form the ringdown.

Prior work assumed the gravitational waves do not interact with each other, but these studies strongly suggest the opposite.

Mitman explains the results by comparing them to two people jumping on a trampoline.

“Two jumpers who gently hop up and down shouldn’t affect each other that much, but if one person starts bouncing with more energy, then the trampoline will distort, and the other person will start to feel their influence. This is what we mean by nonlinear: the two people on the trampoline experience new oscillations because of the presence and influence of the other person.”

University of Mississippi astronomer Sumeet Kulkarni explains why these details matter.

“Black hole ringdowns offer a great playground to test Einstein’s theory of relativity. But to use ringdowns as a test, one must understand them completely. This study takes us a step closer to this understanding.”

That said, these results have thus far only been witnessed in computer simulations.

Right now, our detection tools aren’t strong or sensitive enough to capture these small effects on actual far-off collisions, though scientists are working on that, according to Mark Ho-Yeuk Cheung, an author on the Johns Hopkins study.

“An obvious next step is to gauge whether these effects will be detectable in LIGO or next generation detectors.  While the prospects are promising, we still need to quantify more precisely how and when they will be detected.”

The scientists at the two universities love how their independent but complimentary findings also illustrate the scientific process at work.

Honestly, we should all be happy to know that humans can still work together to achieve great things!