SUMMARY: Astronomers with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found the heaviest star ever seen - 80 times the mass of our Sun - and it's got a twin. Located 20,000 light-years from Earth, the two massive stars in WR 20a go around each other every 3.7 days. These two stars are very young, probably only 2-3 million years old, and highly unstable. It'll only be a few more million years before they explode, one after the other as supernovas.

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I've been to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics a couple of times, and I know a few of the people who worked on this finding (which I didnt realize, until now...). Pretty neat!

How fast do they travel as they orbit one another?

What is the chance for this types of star to form a black hole right after they die?

It's safe to bet your lunch money that each will. Too bad we won't be around to watch. Let' leave a note for those on watch then.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

What happens when two black holes try to comsume each other?

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"Human curiosity and the desire to make the intangible tangible, has led us into a new age where the New World has been settled, and the West has been won. But if you think that we, the human race, has conquered everything there is to conquer, then just look to the sky--at space--last and greatest of the frontiers."

It is supposed to create intense gravitational energy in the form of gravity waves that some of the gravity wave observatories are trying to detect. Unfortunately all they ever detect are big trucks driving by, but that's because they're on the Earth. A new space based one is in the works that will not have this problem.

Otherwise, the two black holes should merge into one with a mass equal to the sum of the two original black holes.

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

Thats cool, I bet they give off a huge amount of energy and radiation when they merge. It would be a spectacular site to see, thats for sure!

__________________
"Human curiosity and the desire to make the intangible tangible, has led us into a new age where the New World has been settled, and the West has been won. But if you think that we, the human race, has conquered everything there is to conquer, then just look to the sky--at space--last and greatest of the frontiers."