Three supermassive black holes discovered at the center of one galaxy

[Judi Lynn]

The simultaneous merging of giant galaxies.

BY
AMIT MALEWAR
NOVEMBER 23, 2019



The irregular galaxy NGC 6240. New observations show that it harbours not two but three supermassive black holes at its core. The northern black hole (N) is active and was known before. The zoomed-in new high-spatial resolution image shows that the southern component consists of two supermassive black holes (S1 and S2). The green colour indicates the distribution of gas ionized by radiation surrounding the black holes. The red lines show the contours of the starlight from the galaxy and the length of the white bar corresponds to 1000 light years. Photo: P Weilbacher (AIP), NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)


For the first time, scientists have captured three supermassive black holes at the center of the galaxy NGC 6240. Intriguingly these black holes are so close to each other.

The observations were made by an n international research team led by scientists from Göttingen and Potsdam using the 8-meter VLT, a telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The 3D MUSE spectrograph was utilized in high-resolution spatial mode together with four artificially produced laser stars and an adaptive optics system.

The pictures are obtained using sophisticated technology with a sharpness like that of the Hubble Space Telescope, yet additionally contains a spectrum for each image pixel. These spectra were decisive in deciding the movement and masses of the supermassive black holes in NGC 6240.

NGC 6240 galaxy is known as an irregular galaxy due to its particular shape. Till now, scientists used to consider that the galaxy is formed due o collision of two smaller galaxies and therefore contains two black holes in its core. These galactic ancestors moved towards each other at velocities of several 100 km/s and are still in the process of merging.

More:
https://www.techexplorist.com/three-supermassive-black-holes-discovered-center-one-galaxy/27982/

[C_U_L8R]

1. What happens when a black hole eats another black hole?

Any theories?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Visualization of Merging Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

[C_U_L8R]

3. What a dance!

[Igel]

4. They merge.

And a lot of energy's released.

[cstanleytech]

5. You get a larger black hole. After all its not like they mate and have a bunch of baby black holes.

[C_U_L8R]

6. Darn. That would be something.

[cstanleytech]

7. Be happy it doesnt happen as if it did our sun might very well not exist as if

they could generate new black holes from such mergers they might very well have devoured a good portion of the free matter in it including the matter that makes up our sun and its planets.