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Astronomers Discover Pair of Black Holes In Inactive Galaxy

Posted by Unknown on from the ate-all-the-other-stars dept.

William Robinson (875390) writes "The Astronomers at XMM-Newton have detected a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of an inactive galaxy. Most massive galaxies in the Universe are thought to harbor at least one supermassive black hole at their center. And a pair of black holes is indication of strong possibility that the galaxies have merged. Finding black holes in quiescent galaxies is difficult because there are no gas clouds feeding the black holes, so the cores of these galaxies are truly dark. It can be only detected by this 'tidal disruption event'."

4 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Any chance of finding gravitational waves? by jfengel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The discovery of pulsars rotating around each other by Hulse and Taylor was a major confirmation of general relativity because of the way they were radiating energy in gravitational waves. Is there any way to use black holes to confirm this even more? Would it be something we could help "point" a gravitational wave detector at?

    (Sorry, IANAP, so I apologize if this is a stupid question.)

    1. Re:Any chance of finding gravitational waves? by rotorbudd · · Score: 3, Informative

      . Also, their separation is by a couple thousand light years,

      TFA reads:
      "The separation between the black holes is quite small: 0.6 milliparsecs, or about 2 thousandths of a light year. That's about the width of our Solar System."
      So gravitation waves might be seen AT that distance

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
  2. Re:Increasingly important topic by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

    As we understand galaxy formation better, galaxy mergers are an increasingly important topic.

    Unfortunately, as always happens in such things, after the merger many stars will lose their jobs as the galaxies try to cut costs. They may also decide to outsource some of the jobs of the current stars to neighboring galaxies, and some existing customers might get screwed over as they decide to get rid of product lines the larger galaxy isn't interested in.

    Mostly these things benefit the big giant holes running things.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. Re:Inactive? by DudemanX · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's "inactive" in the sense that it isn't Active. The Milky Way is also inactive.

    I'm guessing that if these two black holes get close enough then that galaxy could get very active very quickly.