LIGO detects most massive black hole merger to date

I've always thought the event horizon for a black hole has to be spherical.

But my physics intuition tells me that as two of them merge, the resulting BH should have a "peanut" shape, at least initially.

And maybe it can keep having an irregular shape, depending on the mass distribution inside it?

It's only spherical in a Schwarzschild (non-rotating) black hole. A rotating black hole is called a Kerr black hole, and stuff gets weird, such as there being an oblate event horizon, a weird outer horizon called an ergosphere where spacetime gets dragged along such that it's impossible to stand still and you can accelerate objects using the black hole, a weirder inner horizon called the Cauchy horizon where time travel is possible, and a singularity in the shape of a ring. Your intuition is correct that during a merger it would be weirder still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerr_metric

https://arxiv.org/pdf/0706.0622

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergosphere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_horizon

Edit: Updated the bit about about horizons as I research a bit more. It's complicated, and I'm still not positive I have it exactly right, but I think it's now as good as I can get it.

No matter how chaotic the merger looks, the event horizon must asymptotically become either spherical (Schwarzschild) or oblate (Kerr). The mass distribution inside doesn’t change this, general relativity doesn’t allow static “lumpy” horizons.

It’s wild how much happens in those milliseconds though. Numerical relativity papers like the one you shared from arxiv.org show the horizon “sloshing” before it stabilizes.

Is it even sensible to talk about a "mass distribution" inside of an event horizon?

Sure, especially consider if singularities are not real. Then what's inside the event horizon is just some bunch of unknown material in some actual shape. Why wouldn't it be?

If singularities are real...same thing but more boring answer maybe? (the distribution just being: in the center).

> Why wouldn't it be?

Because the whole concept of "shape" assumes properties of space that might not apply inside an event horizon?

There’s no reason to expect that the properties of space are different inside the event horizon than outside. Of course the direction of time turns sharply as you go inside, but otherwise space is just space.

You only get an asymmetric black hole during the milliseconds of a merger. And that asymmetry is entirely due to the mass distribution inside the black hole. The black hole only becomes spherical again once the singularities have merged. Or in the more common case of rotating black holes, they only become properly oblate again once their ringularities have merged. Either way it happens quite quickly.

> the direction of time turns sharply as you go inside

Yeah, that's what I meant. It's hard for me to reconcile the concepts of "the direction of time turns sharply" with "space is just space".