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Scientists followed a mysterious signal — and found 2 black holes gorging on something like never before
- A pair of supermassive black holes has been found consuming an enormous gas cloud, unlike anything seen before. The discovery, made possible by a peculiar radiation signal, provides insight into the behavior of supermassive black holes and their relationship with the galaxies they inhabit.
- The signal was first detected in March 2021 in a galaxy located approximately 1 billion light-years away, in the northern constellation Cygnus. Scientists suspected the signal might be linked to supernovas or tidal disruption events but a highly unusual oscillation pattern warned this was not that case.
- Observations with a range of wavelengths confirmed that the signal's origin was unfamiliar. The researchers turned to theoretical models to solve the mystery. They hypothesized that the radiation was produced by a pair of supermassive black holes consuming a massive cloud of galactic gas.
- Based on the simulation, the light emitted by the system can be explained by a binary supermassive black hole interacting with a gas cloud roughly equivalent in mass to the Sun. The two black holes are separated by 0.8 milliparsecs, orbit each other roughly every 130 days, have a combined mass of about 40 million solar masses, and are expected to merge in approximately 70,000 years.
- If validated, this discovery could transform how astronomers study supermassive black holes by offering a new method to investigate their evolution and their role in shaping galaxies.
- These massive objects are closely linked to their host galaxies, and learning more about their feeding habits could provide fresh insight into galactic development.
- Finding binary supermassive black holes is a challenging task, but it is expected to be present in many galaxy centers.
- The fact that we cannot resolve the two black holes with the available instrumentation implies that we need to find alternative techniques to detect them through other methods.
- Additional observations of similar systems will be necessary to solidify their conclusions. Future data will help refine models of how supermassive black holes behave when consuming galactic gas.
- New data and simulations using these data are required to confirm the scenario that they are proposing to probe the authors' hypothesis.
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