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How Supermassive Black Holes Merge
What happens when two compact objects with millions of times the mass of our sun collide? Two small galaxies come together, merge their stars, and you get a bigger galaxy. Galaxies get bigger and bigger through galactic mergers. Though, astronomers have always wondered: what happens with the two supermassive black holes (SMBHs) found at the center of many galaxies?An international team of physicists have developed a computer simulation designed to answer this very question. The following is the result of their simulation.
Gas Inflows and the Formation of Nuclear Disks in Galaxy Mergers
It turns out, the interaction depends a lot on the amount of hot gas surrounding each black hole. As they start to interact, this gas exerts a frictional force on the black holes, slowing down their spin rate. Once they get within the width of our solar system, they should start emitting gravitational waves, which continues to extract energy from the system. This causes them to continue coming together, and eventually merge.
When galaxies collide, the SMBHs at their centers merge into a single black hole of staggering size
The simulation is good news for scientists searching for gravitational waves. A gravitational wave is a fluctuation in the curvature of spacetime which propagates as a wave, traveling outward from a moving object or system of objects. If the mergers are energetic enough, they'll generate gravitational waves detectable across space.
High-resolution scientific visualizations created at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Although gravitational waves has not yet been directly detected, it has been indirectly shown to exist. This was the basis for the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded for measurements of the Hulse-Taylor binary system (more information about this study can be found on Wikipedia).
Two colossal black holes that appear to be orbiting each other 100 times closer than any previously seen from NASA telescope
This post was written by Srikanth from Science-Core. Images collected by Ilker Yoldas from these sources: 1, 2, 3 and 4. If you are interested in contributing to the thinking process and become a guest writer on The Thinking Blog, find out more information here and be my guest!
Gas Inflows and the Formation of Nuclear Disks in Galaxy Mergers
It turns out, the interaction depends a lot on the amount of hot gas surrounding each black hole. As they start to interact, this gas exerts a frictional force on the black holes, slowing down their spin rate. Once they get within the width of our solar system, they should start emitting gravitational waves, which continues to extract energy from the system. This causes them to continue coming together, and eventually merge.
When galaxies collide, the SMBHs at their centers merge into a single black hole of staggering size
The simulation is good news for scientists searching for gravitational waves. A gravitational wave is a fluctuation in the curvature of spacetime which propagates as a wave, traveling outward from a moving object or system of objects. If the mergers are energetic enough, they'll generate gravitational waves detectable across space.
High-resolution scientific visualizations created at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Although gravitational waves has not yet been directly detected, it has been indirectly shown to exist. This was the basis for the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded for measurements of the Hulse-Taylor binary system (more information about this study can be found on Wikipedia).
Two colossal black holes that appear to be orbiting each other 100 times closer than any previously seen from NASA telescope
This post was written by Srikanth from Science-Core. Images collected by Ilker Yoldas from these sources: 1, 2, 3 and 4. If you are interested in contributing to the thinking process and become a guest writer on The Thinking Blog, find out more information here and be my guest!
7 thoughts:
that was an awesome write up. thanks :)
Spectacular shots and a great article. I have always been fascinated with astronomy and the incredible things in outerspace. It, for some reason always reminds me to live for today. We are only here for such a short time and compared the magnitude of the entire universe, we are but minute grains of dust. The importance we place on ourselves and our lives becomes so much more important when I think about all the incredible things we don't yet know.
I'm a little confused, for forgive me for a second while I try to draw out the facts.
The last image of the article is of two galaxies colliding. This is how my astronomy teacher presented it to me, so I'm trying to figure out what you meant by them being black holes. Since a black hole emits no visible light the two objects in the image would have to be giant black spaces surrounded by remnants of gas, but black holes result from collapsing stars, and while they can collide and merge, it is extremely rare. Generally survival of the fittest rules in the universe. A smaller black hole would more or less be eaten rather than an equal merger. Black holes are also limited by the amount of matter that collapsed when the star died and became that black hole.
So, again, I'm a little confused about that image. Are they galaxies that just so happen to have many black holes in them? That would make sense to me, or is there actual factual basis for calling them black holes? I'm not saying you're wrong, just trying to figure out the reality of the situation.
When galaxies merge, the black holes at their cores are thought to follow them...and hence, they also collide!!!
I think that answers your question, s.m.d. :D
Thanks for posting my article, ilker...i might submit more.
@SMD: That is what the astronomers discovered from their observations. Galaxies happen to have a black hole in them, more specifically, at their center.
Here is a quote from the source of that last image:
"When two galaxies collide, the black holes at their cores are thought to fall towards the centre of the resulting larger galaxy. These black holes then go into orbit around each other and should eventually merge. "But no one has ever found a really clear example of a binary black hole before," says David Merritt, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, US."
Here is another, more technical quote from the source of the first image:
"Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitously detected at the centers of most nearby and distant galaxies hosting spheroids. The available data reveal the existence of a remarkably tight correlation between the mass of the central SMBH and the central stellar velocity dispersion of the host galaxy spheroidal component, suggesting a fundamental mechanism connecting the properties of SMBHs with those of their host galaxies. According to the currently popular ''bottom-up'' galaxy formation paradigm, structures in the Universe grow through a complex process of continuous mergers and accretion of smaller systems. Thus, the hierarchical buildup of SMBHs by massive seed black holes present at the center of protogalaxies and the formation of SMBH binaries appear as natural consequences in any hierarchical cosmogony."
The problem with detecting the gravitational waves these interactions produce is that they affect everything .. even the equipment that's attempting to measuring them!
So the solution is to use lasers -- two to be precise -- two set at right angles to each other, to form a letter L.
The idea is that while gravitational waves will affect all matter, their influence on light is less so.
Right now, we don't quite have the level of sensitivity to detect these minuscule fluctuations, but over the next decade, we will...
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What do you think? Post your thoughts..