What happens when black holes collide? Does one black hole “consume” the other? Do they become a larger black hole? Does it get more dense or just larger?
They become a larger black hole, mostly conserving mass, minus a few percent to gravitational waves. However, their mass is proportional to their radius, not volume, so it gets LESS dense. If you laid out a bunch of black holes in a line, just barely not touching, and let them merge, suddenly, the whole sphere of space enclosing the line becomes black hole. It also turns out that a black hole with the mass of the universe would have a volume about the size of the universe.
>> just barely not touching
Which part of them is barely not touching?
In cosmological terms, what is barely not touching? Is that distance measured in meters, kilometers, AUs, lightyears, parsecs?