Deep space images captured with the Giant Metrewave or GMRT radio telescope have revealed a surprising finding: an alignment of supermassive black holes emitting jets of radiation spinning in the same direction. This discovery is so unusual that it has never been observed or theorized before in cosmology.
A team of astronomers from the Universities of Cape Town and Western Cape (South Africa) was investigating radio images of an area of deep space that extends for more than three million light years and that we know as ELAIS-N1 . The study was aimed at examining the weakest and most distant radio emission sources in the universe when they stumbled upon something extraordinary.
The scientists observed a novel behavior in a group of black holes located in the center of their respective galaxies: the emitted jets were aligned and the only plausible explanation seems to be the mysterious fact that all these black holes of galactic nuclei are rotating exactly in the same direction.
“ Given that these black holes do not know about each other, nor do they have any way of exchanging information or directly influencing each other on such a wide scale, this alignment must have occurred during the formation of the galaxies itself, in the primitive universe , ”says Andrew Russ Taylor, leader of the work.
The research generates, of course, new questions about our universe. Is there a cosmic inclination towards certain key orientations in the formation and evolution of galaxies? The answer to this question is likely to pave the way for us to predict what our universe might look like in the future.
The study has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
