The Hubble telescope, which has been orbiting the outer atmosphere at 593 km above sea level since April 1990, has made possible the discovery of a quasar with two central black holes rotating around each other in the Markarian 231 galaxy that is it is only 600 million light-years distant from Earth.
After analyzing the ultraviolet radiation emitted from the center of this galaxy, astrophysicists discovered extreme and surprising properties. Delving into it, which is also the closest galaxy to Earth to have a quasar, they found the presence of not only one, but two supermassive black holes frantically rotating around each other (orbiting between them), generating energy such that it makes the core of the host galaxy dwarfs the brilliance of the billions of stars it houses .
Of the two black holes, one of them orbits the outer edge of the accretion disk (the disk-shaped structure around a massive central object); the second, somewhat smaller, on the inner edge of the disk, also having its own disk , although more insignificant, with an ultraviolet glow.
This particular cosmic object is probably the product of a merger of two galaxies where, in addition, the gaseous matter that surrounds it also rotates very quickly, reaching high temperatures due to friction and turbulence phenomena; d and hence the intense radiation emitted by quasars.
“We are very excited about this finding, as it not only shows the existence of a narrow binary black hole in Markarian 231, but also opens up a new way to systematically search for binary black holes through the nature of their ultraviolet light emission. ” explains Youjun Lu, co-author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal .
Crédito imagen: Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland.
