And if you gotta have a cool last name as a scientist, you cannot go wrong with Pretorius.

You just know this guy has a lab coat somewhere with long black leather gloves and dark, round goggles, with electricity generating machines behind him for atmosphere.

Paper (*cross-listing*): gr-qc/0507014
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2005 09:12:46 GMT (27kb)

Title: Evolution of Binary Black Hole Spacetimes

Authors: Frans Pretorius
Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures
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We describe early success in the evolution of binary black hole spacetimes
with a numerical code based on a generalization of harmonic coordinates.
Indications are that with sufficient resolution this scheme is capable of
evolving binary systems for enough time to extract information about the orbit,
merger and gravitational waves emitted during the event. As an example we show
results from the evolution of a binary composed of two equal mass, non-spinning
black holes, through a single plunge-orbit, merger and ring down. The resultant
black hole is estimated to be a Kerr black hole with angular momentum parameter
a~0.70. At present, lack of resolution far from the binary prevents an accurate
estimate of the energy emitted, though a rough calculation suggests on the
order of 5% of the initial rest mass of the system is radiated as gravitational
waves during the final orbit and ringdown.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0507014 , 27kb)