Found: three black holes on collision course

[Judi Lynn]

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019



Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/George Mason Univ./R. Pfeifle et al.; Optical: SDSS & NASA/STScI


Astronomers have spotted three giant black holes within a titanic collision of three galaxies. Several observatories, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory and other NASA space telescopes, captured the unusual system.

"We were only looking for pairs of black holes at the time, and yet, through our selection technique, we stumbled upon this amazing system," said Ryan Pfeifle of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, the first author of a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal describing these results. "This is the strongest evidence yet found for such a triple system of actively feeding supermassive black holes."

The system is known as SDSS J084905.51+111447.2 (SDSS J0849+1114 for short) and is located a billion light-years from Earth.

To uncover this rare black hole trifecta, researchers needed to combine data from telescopes both on the ground and in space. First, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) telescope, which scans large swaths of the sky in optical light from New Mexico, imaged SDSS J0849+1114. With the help of citizen scientists participating in a project called Galaxy Zoo, it was then tagged as a system of colliding galaxies.

More:
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-black-holes-collision.html

[C_U_L8R]

1. Let's send Trump in his Space Farce to check it out.

[at140]

2. I thought black holes do not emit any light

because the gravitational force is so strong, even light can not escape the black hole.
But the photograph shows 3 bright spots? Please explain??

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Black holes themselves do not. But they attract material which accelerates into the black hole ...

... and the infalling material emits radiation as it is squeezed into a more compact mass, where atoms and ions collide more frequently with each other, converting kinetic energy into radiation. The material gets so hot even X rays are emitted.

In the absence of surrounding material to fall into the black hole, it would be almost invisible (except for Hawking radiation).

"The light is the shadow's shadow", to quote an overused line from Somtow Sucharitkul's Inquest series of novels.

[at140]

4. Thanks for that very good explanation,

even I understood it

[getting old in mke]

5. I'd say LIGO is going to be busy

But since they are still 10K-30K apart, I guess the staff can at least take the weekend off...