  We present an investigation into how sensitive the last orbits and merger of
binary black hole systems are to the presence of spurious radiation in the
initial data. Our numerical experiments consist of a binary black hole system
starting the last couple of orbits before merger with additional spurious
radiation centered at the origin and fixed initial angular momentum. As the
energy in the added spurious radiation increases, the binary is invariably
hardened for the cases we tested, i.e. the merger of the two black holes is
hastened. The change in merger time becomes significant when the additional
energy provided by the spurious radiation increases the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner
(ADM) mass of the spacetime by about 1%. While the final masses of the black
holes increase due to partial absorption of the radiation, the final spins
remain constant to within our numerical accuracy. We conjecture that the
spurious radiation is primarily increasing the eccentricity of the orbit and
secondarily increasing the mass of the black holes while propagating out to
infinity.
