Astronomers from the University of New Mexico (UNM), in Albuquerque (USA), assure that, for the first time in history, it has been possible to observe and measure the orbital motion between two supermassive black holes. These are in a galaxy located 750 million light years from Earth called 0402 + 379, and they have been studying them for more than a decade.
But what are supermassive black holes? They are black holes with a mass of millions or billions of solar masses – the solar mass is equal to the mass of the Sun and is equivalent to about 332,950 times that of the Earth. In this case we are talking about, the combined mass of both supermassive black holes is 15,000 million solar masses and, due to their incredible size, their orbital period is around 24,000 years.
UNM Physics and Astronomy department graduate student Karishma Bansal, university professor Greg Taylor and researchers from Stanford, the United States Naval Observatory and the Gemini Observatory have studied the interaction of these black holes for twelve years. .
“For a long time, we have been searching space to try to find a pair of these supermassive black holes orbiting as a result of the merger of two galaxies,” explains Taylor in a UNM press release. “And although we have theorized that this should be happening, no one had seen it until now,” he adds.
In February 2016, an international team of researchers announced that they had detected for the first time gravitational waves – ripples in space-time caused by very violent events, such as the merger of two black holes or the explosion of a supernova – that had Einstein predicted just a century ago, in 1916.
The future of the Milky Way
Thanks to UNM research, astronomers will be able to begin to understand what leads to the merger of supermassive black holes that create these ripples in the structure of space-time and to learn more about the evolution of galaxies and the role these play. black holes in all of it .
The observation of the orbit and interaction of these two supermassive black holes can also help us to better understand what could happen in the future to our own galaxy, since the Andromeda galaxy, which also has a massive black hole in its center, will collide, in about 4,000 million years, with our Milky Way. The galaxy resulting from this collision has been named Lactomeda. By the way, for your peace of mind: according to the calculations that have been made, both the Sun and the Earth would surely survive this galactic merger.
Image: Josh Valenzuela / UNM
