In a recent study, astronomers have discovered 2 supermassive black holes heading towards each other, and could merge to create a force that can pull in several stars.
Ever wonder what happens when one black hole gets in the way of another? Easy answer- the one with a higher gravitational force will "swallow" the other. But thats not all. As they merge, they emit gravitational waves that can travel through space at the speed of light.
NASA has simulated this event and has discovered the pattern in which these gravitational waves travel, using concepts from Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Some out of the world (almost literally :) ) images from the simulation here.
Now that a pattern has been discovered, scientists can detect those in space. While at one level it will provide some proof to Einstein's theories, it could provide important insights into the way we think about the universe.
It apparently took NASA a lot of computing horsepower to complete the simulation:
Earlier trials failed since the equations based on Einstein's general relativity theory were so complicated that they made supercomputers crash; the enormous gravity of black holes cause disturbances in time and space, making time stop and space shrink and expand.
NASA researchers have managed to transform the theory into mathematical algorithms and run through it through Columbia, the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world. Its 2,032 interconnected 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors ran for 80 hours, in an operation that would have taken 18 years for a single processor to perform.
Something like what it took to find the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything?