Scientists led by researchers at the Durham University in the UK ran the huge cosmological simulations that can be used to predict the rate at which gravitational waves caused by collisions between the monster black holes might be detected.
The amplitude and frequency of these waves could unveil the initial mass of the seeds from which the first black holes grew since they were formed 13 billion years ago and provide further clues about what caused them and where they formed, the researchers said.
Two detections of gravitational waves caused by collisions between supermassive black holes should be possible each year using space-based instruments such as the Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (eLISA) detector that is due to launch in 2034, the researchers said.
In February the international LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced that they had detected gravitational waves for the first time using ground-based instruments and this month reported a second detection.
Also Read
Current theories suggest that the seeds of these black holes were the result of either the growth and collapse of the first generation of stars in the universe; collisions between stars in dense stellar clusters; or the direct collapse of extremely massive stars in the early universe.
As each of these theories predicts different initial masses for the seeds of supermassive black hole seeds, the collisions would produce different gravitational wave signals.
"Understanding more about gravitational waves means that we can study the universe in an entirely different way," said lead author Jaime Salcido, PhD student in Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology.
"By combining the detection of gravitational waves with simulations we could ultimately work out when and how the first seeds of supermassive black holes formed," he said.
Gravitational waves were first predicted 100 years ago by Albert Einstein as part of his Theory of General Relativity.