#my advisor is convinced its like black widow mating

DUELING SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES

I like to imagine that supermassive black holes are incredibly territorial. They may tolerate millions of smaller black holes orbiting among them and feeding from their AGN disks, but put two supermassive black holes in the same galaxy, and they get consumed by a murderous rage that THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE.

They charge towards each other, throwing entire star systems aside like they’re little more than pebbles as they prepare to enact the deadly ritual all supermassive black holes do to decide who gets to share the merged galaxy. The gas gathers around them in a frightful disk, narrow streams feeding from its inner edge onto frightfully hot whirlpools surrounding each individual hole. The lower-mass one takes a position close to the disk’s inner edge, hoping it can gobble up enough mass to rival the bigger one and win the challenge.

Chanting murderous mantras and horrific oaths in gravitational waves the two black holes spiral together, their event horizons joining, and in the final throwdown their consciousnesses duke it out to determine which will control the merged black hole space-time.

If the mass ratio is imbalanced, then the bigger one just got an absolutely glorious meal. But if it isn’t…fate hangs in the balance…