An 11-year hunt for ripples in space-time produced by the merging of two black holes has apparently turned up empty for now.

This means Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity still has at least one remaining asterisk next to it, since the mystery of gravitational waves remains its last unconfirmed prediction.

A new study in the journal Science has found that gravitational waves are more mysterious than perhaps initially thought. Gravitational waves, or literal ripples in space and time, can theoretically be created when two black holes spiral around one another as galaxies crash into each other over the course of billions of years.

Scientists expected to make a direct detection of gravitational waves by now, but this study might cause a re-think for researchers hunting for these signs of the biggest crashes in the cosmos.

SEE ALSO: Distant Galaxy Has 3 Supermassive Black Holes at Its Center

More broadly, this could mean scientists need to rethink the mechanics of black hole collisions.

“The main reason we were surprised by our result is that we didn’t see the gravitational wave signals predicted by many teams of theorists,” Vikram Ravi, a co-author of the study, told Mashable via email.

“That is, we’ve achieved our design sensitivity that should have yielded a detection of gravitational waves, but didn’t. Our result means that theorists need to come up with new models for gravitational waves from binary supermassive black holes.”

Gravitational waves are sent out from merging black holes because they actually perturb the fabric of space-time around them.

Think about space-time as a sheet on a bed, and the binary black holes (the two black holes orbiting one another as galaxies merge) as a pair of bowling balls spinning around one another on that sheet.

The sheet would ripple and move, affecting other parts of the bed as well.

Ravi and the research team were looking for those ripples in space-time by probing the universe with a powerful radio telescope.

http://mashable.com/2015/09/27/colliding-black-holes-study-einstein/#snZUWin7KOqZ