Black Hole Merger Lights Up Surrounding Accretion Disk
takyon writes:
Astronomers see first light flare from two distant black holes colliding
A whopping 7.5 billion light-years from Earth, two black holes, each about the size of Long Island, rapidly spun around each other several times per second before smashing together in a cataclysmic explosion that sent shockwaves through the Universe. Normally, violent unions like this are dark events, but astronomers think they saw a flare of light emerge from this celestial dance - potentially the first time light has ever been seen from black holes merging.
It's a unique discovery since black holes are notorious for not producing any light at all. These super dense objects are so massive that nothing can escape their uigravitational pull - not even light. So how exactly did researchers see a flare from two black holes that aren't supposed to flare?
Well, the black holes may have just been in the right place at the right time, according to a new study published in the journal Physical Review Letters [DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.251102] [DX]. When they spun together, they were located inside a giant disc of gas and dust. This disc of material spans light-years and actually surrounds a third black hole - a supermassive one at the center of a galaxy. Since the dueling black holes were inside this dusty environment, their spinning and eventual merger created something like a shock wave that slammed into the surrounding dirt and gas. That heated up the nearby material, causing it to glow brighter than normal - and allowing researchers from Earth to spot it.
There are a lot of stars (and stellar black holes) hanging around near supermassive black holes in the centers of some galaxies.
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