Two black holes devour the remains of a galaxy merger
A team of researchers has discovered these two supermassive black holes in the middle of a meal. Research that teaches us more about these immense cosmic entities.
It's been a long time since we wrote about black holes! These cosmic vastnesses are perhaps the most fascinating objects that can be found in space. Certainly the scariest too. So let's get scared at the edge of our universe.
The behavior of black holes
Being the heaviest and most compact celestial object in our world , black holes absorb everything in their gravitational field. Everything, even light , is well known. Because of these totally unusual properties, we still know very little about these monstrosities and their “behaviours” . The case we are going to study here further thickens the mystery around them.
It was the Keck Observatory, located in Maunakea, Hawaii that made this discovery. The team of astronomers has announced that they have discovered something never seen before: two supermassive black holes in the middle of a “meal” .
Black holes and merging galaxies
These two black holes are located in the galaxy UGC 4211, more precisely in the constellation Cancer. Their discovery made researchers realize that binary black holes and galaxy mergers were much more common than we previously thought.
Only 500 million light-years apart (a reasonable distance for supermassive black holes), the researchers realized that the two cosmic entities were devouring the remains of a galaxy merger located close to them.
More common than we thought
The results of this new research, published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters , were presented at a press conference at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.
According to Michael Koss, lead author of the study and researcher at Eureka Scientific: "Previous simulations suggested that the bulk of black hole pairs in nearby galaxies were inactive ," he said.
If their findings are confirmed, this would mean that "many pairs of supermassive black holes would be growing in the very hearts of galaxies. If this is the case, we will observe more gravitational waves caused by these galaxy mergers or black hole collisions. “ , said Ezequiel Treister, an astronomer at the Universidad Católica de Chile and co-author of the study.
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