Scientists discovered that two supermassive black holes disrupted gas clouds that kept reappearing |

[The Epoch Times, 14 Samhain, 2024](The Epoch Times reporter Chen Juncun said) Astronomers have discovered that two supermassive black holes are disrupting gas clouds in a distant galaxy 1 billion light-years away from Earth, and this phenomenon continues on. The size of these two black holes is as large as 40 million suns.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said in a November 13 news release that astronomers at the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory used the agency’s Swift to detect a pair of stars at the center of a galaxy for the first time that supermassive black holes scavenge for clues. from the gas cloud environment.

Lorena Hernández-García, an astronomer at the Millennium Astrophysics Institute and the University of Valparaiso in Chile, said that this is called AT The strange events of 2021hdr happen again every few months.

Hernandez-Garcia said they believe a cloud of gas entered the two black holes. As these two black holes orbit each other, they interact with the gas cloud, disrupting and consuming its gas, creating an oscillation in the light that the system emits. ‘spread.

This pair of black holes is located in the center of a galaxy called 2MASX J21240027+3409114. The galaxy is located in the constellation Cygnus, 1 billion light years away from Earth.

The two black holes are about 16 billion miles (26 billion kilometers) apart, close enough that light only takes a day to travel between them. Their combined mass is 40 million times the size of the Sun.

Astronomers estimate that the two black holes will orbit each other every 130 days and will merge and merge in about 70,000 years.

In 2021, astronomers first detected AT 2021hdr through the “Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)” at the California Institute of Technology. From that point on, they saw such an event again every 60 to 90 days.

In a study led by Hernandez-Garcia, Hernandez-Garcia and her team began observing AT 2021hdr in November 2022.

They initially thought that the signal they detected could be a byproduct of normal activity in the center of the galaxy. They then investigated whether the destruction of a star too close to the black hole was a possible cause.

Finally, they identified another possibility, a tidal disruption event in the gas cloud, in which tidal forces could do more damage than the black holes themselves.

When the gas cloud meets the two black holes, gravity pulls the gas cloud apart, forming filaments around the black holes, and the heat from the friction heats it up, making the gas close to the black holes especially dense and hot.

As the two black holes orbit, complex interaction forces eject some gas from the system with each rotation. These interactions eventually produce the light waves that astronomers observe.

Hernandez-Garcia and her team plan to continue monitoring AT 2021hdr to better understand the system and improve their models. They are also interested in studying its parent galaxy, which is currently merging with another nearby galaxy.

Bradley Cenko, principal investigator of the Neil Grylls Swift Observatory, said that as the observatory approaches its 20th anniversary, it is incredible that it is still helping the scientific community to explore complete all new.

“It can also do a lot to guide our understanding of the changing universe,” he said.

The above research results were published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics on November 13.

Editor-in-Chief: Li Lin #