hunck
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2011
- Messages
- 9,426
- Location
- Hobbs End
Black holes may merge with light of a trillion suns
Two small black holes merge near third supermassive black hole.
When black holes collide, the ensuing cosmic drama was assumed to play out under the cloak of darkness, given that both objects are invisible. But now astronomers believe they have made the first optical observations of such a merger, marked by a blaze of light a trillion times brighter than the sun.
Two small black holes merge near third supermassive black hole.
When black holes collide, the ensuing cosmic drama was assumed to play out under the cloak of darkness, given that both objects are invisible. But now astronomers believe they have made the first optical observations of such a merger, marked by a blaze of light a trillion times brighter than the sun.
The flare was linked to a known black hole merger detected last year by the gravitational wave observatory, Ligo, which picked up ripples sent out through the fabric of space. The latest observations suggest that when these cataclysmic events occur within the accretion disk of an even more gigantic black hole, they are brilliantly illuminated by the surrounding dust and gas, making them also visible to optical telescopes.
Closer analysis suggested the merger had taken place in the vicinity of a distant supermassive black hole called J1249+3449, with a diameter equivalent to Earth’s orbit around the sun. The pair of smaller black holes sat at the outer reaches of the accretion disk, a halo of stars, dust and gas swirling around the vast central sinkhole. “These objects swarm like angry bees around the monstrous queen bee at the centre,” said Ford.
As the pair of black holes, each around the size of the Isle of Wight and with a combined mass of 150 suns, spiral inwards and coalesce, gravitational waves are sent out across space and the new, merged object experiences a kick in the opposite direction, sending it ploughing through the dust and gas of the disk and out into surrounding space.
If confirmed, the observations could help to resolve a central problem in black hole astronomy: that there are far more heavyweight black holes than there ought to be. Black holes form from collapsed ancient stars. Bigger black holes form when these merge, but some black holes are so big that in theory it ought to have taken longer than the age of the universe for them to snowball to their observed size.