Astronomers predict that Andromeda is on a collision course with our galaxy
They have now observed the aftermath of the collision of two other spiral galaxies
Astronomers have discovered a pair of monstrous black holes lurking in the debris of a cosmic collision between two spiral galaxies about a billion years ago. Hungry monsters are located about 90 million light years from us, writes The Space server.
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The Milky Way collides with Andromeda
A team of scientists has identified a pair, or “binary system,” of supermassive black holes while examining a merging galaxy known as NGC 7727 using the Gemini South telescope in the Chilean Andes.
The current observations of NGC 7727 are particularly important to astronomers because they predict what the Milky Way will look like in about 4.5 billion years, when it collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Andromeda is currently located about 2.5 million light-years from our home galaxy.
“Newly discovered supermassive black holes orbit each other and have a mass of 154 million times that of the Sun and 6.3 million times that of the Sun, respectively. They are currently about 1,600 light-years apart, but eventually, like their parent galaxies, they will collide. After merging, they will form an even larger supermassive black hole by the sum of their combined masses,” the researchers report.
According to the scientists, NGC 7727 is an ideal example of what happens to spiral galaxies when they collide because it lacks the characteristic features of the two galaxies that formed it. The spiral arms of both galaxies have been wiped out in exchange for disorder,” the researchers report.
An image from Gemini South’s Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) instrument shows vast swirling bands of interstellar dust and gas that look like nebulous webs wrapped around the merging hearts of progenitor galaxies.
An even bigger supermassive black hole will form
And as the new galaxy is still recovering from its violent merger, NGC 7727’s structure shows scattered patches of intense star formation, so-called starburst regions, which occur when two gas-rich galaxies collide, triggering an influx of dense gas and dust, which serve as building blocks for the birth of stars. The bright blue spots indicate that relatively intense star formation is taking place here.
When the dust in NGC 7727 settles, figuratively and literally, and star formation slows, the galaxy will begin to take the shape of an elliptical galaxy full of older stars and will contain only a single supermassive black hole with a mass of 160.3 solar masses, the study concludes.
Preview photo source: NASA, source: The Space
2023-10-28 12:02:57
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