I've read a report about LIGO saying that the ring-down oscillation showed that it took time for the pair of BHs to fully merge, implying there was a momentary bulge as one circled around and into the other.
I imagine two black holes going past each other, but coming close enough that the event horizons intersect slightly. Would they have sufficient momentum to NOT merge? Effectively to pull in on each other at something less than acceleration at C?
At the intersection zone I picture gravity pulling in both directions, so momentarily the intersection would have zero local gravity. So perhaps this zone would no longer be behind the event horizon. And moving fast enough the black holes would seemingly clip each other before they merged. Perhaps some ring-down noise would happen as each event horizon got perturbed in the close pass.
