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Scientists have spotted the best evidence to date of a trio of supermassive black holes in seemingly merging galaxies, says a new article.
Evolutionary theories of the universe predict that galaxies and huge black holes at their center evolve over time by fusing into each other. But scenarios where three supermassive black holes exist in the center of large galaxies are hard to find. Understanding these systems can help understand how galaxies evolve more generally.
"It would really help us understand how galaxy mergers affect supermassive black holes and vice versa," Gizmodo, the study's author, told Ryan Pfeifle, a Ph.D. student at Gizmodo. George Mason University.
When supermassive black holes begin to engulf the material and spit out radiation, they become active galactic nuclei. This can happen when two galaxies come closer. Despite their importance, the fusion of galaxies with two active galactic nuclei is hard to come by, with fewer than 30 candidates documented, according to the article in The Astrophysical Journal.
The scientists behind this article searched for dual activity galactic nuclei by first analyzing the infrared data on galaxy fusions taken by the WISE space telescope. They then studied in more detail the X-ray data from these sources from the X-ray Chandra observatory and the NuSTAR space telescope, as well as infrared data from the large binocular telescope and optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. .
One of these sources, called SDSS J0849 + 1114, seemed to have all the features of a trio of active galactic nuclei at the center of the fused galaxies. This included three x-ray sources, one in the center of each of the three galaxies, and an infrared signature of a smoking gun from one of the black aspirating holes of the material. Together, this was the strongest evidence to date of a trio of supermassive black holes in molten galaxies, said Pfeifle.
SDSS J0849 + 1114 excites more than its rarity, as such systems could help explain the fusion of supermassive black holes. There has long been an astrophysical problem called "parsec's final problem". When two supermassive black holes approach each other, they go into orbit and move closer, losing frictional energy with the surrounding stars and gases. But once they are about parsec, or 3.26 light-years away, the simulations show that they are taking a more stable orbit, and it would take them longer than the age of the universe to actually merge. But since galactic fusions are part of scientists' theory of the evolution of the universe, these black holes must merge in one way or another.
The introduction of a third supermassive black hole in a pair of binary supermassive black holes could provide the punch needed to allow the merge to unfold at a more reasonable time.
"They present a pretty compelling case that this system is a fusion of three supermassive black holes," Chiara Mingarelli, an associate researcher at the Flatiron Institute's Computational Astrophysics Center, told Gizmodo. "To see this kind of system in real life in the universe is encouraging."
Scientists are currently searching for space-time ripple traces created by supermassive black hole binaries via pulsation matrices, experiments that measure changes in the pulsation rate of dense neutron stars and in rotation. These new results are encouraging as they allow the supermassive black holes to merge and give hope that the experiments on the heartbeat matrix, such as the NANOGrav experiment, which has been going on for more than a decade, will find something. However, Mingarelli pointed out that requiring three supermassive black holes to see these waves could delay the results of the pulsation matrix by a few years. Hopefully, there are other mechanisms that allow binary supermassive black holes to merge without a third partner, she said.
Pfeifle noted that there was no guarantee that these black holes would merge, as this would require a better understanding of the movement of the system.
Nevertheless, scientists now have a suite of tools to find these triple supermassive black hole systems. Pfeifle said the team will continue to look for other examples in order to develop a broader understanding of them.
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