An international team of researchers has discovered a pair of supermassive black holes in orbit around one another.
This is the first time such a pair could be found in an ordinary galaxy. They were discovered because they ripped apart a star when ESA's space observatory XMM-Newton happened to be looking in their direction.
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On 10 June 2010, a tidal disruption event was spotted by XMM-Newton in galaxy SDSS J120136.02+300305.5, approximately 2 billion light-years away. Komossa and her colleagues were scanning the data for such events and scheduled follow-up observations just days later with XMM-Newton and NASA's Swift satellite.
The galaxy was still spilling X-rays into space. It looked exactly like a tidal disruption event caused by a supermassive black hole but as they tracked the slowly fading emission day after day something strange happened.
![Are Black Holes Really Black?]( "Are Black Holes Really Black?")
Why are some black holes actually not actually 'black'? The question is answered in a new study by "The University of Cambridge
The X-rays fell below detectable levels between days 27 and 48 after the discovery. Then they re-appeared and continued to follow a more expected fading rate, as if nothing had happened.
Now, thanks to Fukun Liu, this behavior can be explained. "This is exactly what you would expect from a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting one another," says Liu.
The findings have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Source: ANI
Are Black Holes Really Black?
Why are some black holes actually not actually 'black'? The question is answered in a new study by "The University of Cambridge
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The X-rays fell below detectable levels between days 27 and 48 after the discovery. Then they re-appeared and continued to follow a more expected fading rate, as if nothing had happened.
Now, thanks to Fukun Liu, this behavior can be explained. "This is exactly what you would expect from a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting one another," says Liu.
The findings have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Source: ANI
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For the first time the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy was measured by an international team, led by researchers at MIT's Haystack Observatory.
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 AMD Detector Technology from the UK Astronomy Technology CentreSpace technology used to discover distant galaxies has been adapted to detect AMD, which is the most common form of vision loss in adults. | Advertisement
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