Maunka, Hawaii (KHON2) — The vastness of space has captivated scientists and writers for centuries. A black hole is an astronomical object that has a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape from it.
The first person in modern history to suggest the existence of black holes was John Michell in 1783. Black holes were then “rediscovered” by Albert Einstein in 1905. But it wasn’t until 1964 that humans noticed a black hole in space by American astronomers Bruce Pallick and Robert Brown .
The Keck Observatory in Maunakea announces that a team of astronomers has discovered something never before seen: two supermassive black holes feeding on the universe, together.
These two black holes are located in the galaxy UGC 4211. Another thing that these two black holes have allowed astronomers to discover is that binary black holes and galaxy mergers are much more common than scientists previously thought.
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A near-infrared image of the Galaxy Merger was taken using the Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii (Photo/Eureka Scientific via Keck Observatory) -
Artist’s conception of UGC 4211, a pair of merged galaxies with two central black holes growing side by side, just 750 light-years away. Binary black holes are the closest together observed at multiple wavelengths. Photo/Alma Eso, M. Weiss via Keck Observatory) -
Artist’s conception of UGC 4211, a pair of merged galaxies with two central black holes growing side by side, just 750 light-years away. Binary black holes are the closest together observed at multiple wavelengths. Photo/Alma Eso, M. Weiss via Keck Observatory)
The two black holes are 500 million light-years apart in the constellation of Cancer, which is a very short distance in the grand scheme of the infinite universe.
These companions were located while scientists were studying nearby merging galaxies. Then, they saw that these two black holes were devouring the by-products of the merger.
said Michael Koss, senior research scientist at Eureka Scientific and lead author of the study.
So if black hole binaries are indeed common, astronomers have said this is an important finding in detecting future gravitational waves.
“There may be many pairs of growing supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies that we have not been able to identify until now. If this is the case, we will be observing in the near future events,” said Ezequiel Traister, an astronomer at Universidad Cattolica de Chile and one of the authors of the paper. Repeating gravitational waves caused by the merger of these objects across the universe.”
“All of this data together gave us a clearer picture of how galaxies like ours turned out to be what they are, and what they will become in the future,” Traister said. Until now, scientists have mostly studied only the early stages of galaxy mergers.
Astronomers have discovered that our Milky Way galaxy is on its way to merging with the nearby Andromeda galaxy, and this discovery provides a greater understanding of how this merger occurs.
“The collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda is in its very early stages and is expected to happen
In about 4.5 billion years. What we just studied is the source in the last stage of
Collision, so what we see foreshadows this merger and also gives us an insight into
The relationship between black holes that merge, grow and eventually produce
Koss said.