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Astronomers have highlighted a large number of supermassive double black holes, likely precursors of gigantic black hole melting events.
This confirms the current understanding of cosmological evolution – that galaxies and their associated black holes merge with time, thus forming larger and larger galaxies and black holes.
For the research, published in the Royal Astronomical Society's Monthly Opinion journal, the team looked at radio maps of strong jet sources and found signs that would typically be present when looking for black holes in close orbit .
The supermassive black holes emit powerful jets. When supermassive binary black holes gravitate into orbit, the jet emanating from the core of a galaxy periodically changes direction.
Astronomers have studied the direction in which these jets are emitted and the deviations in these directions; they compared the direction of the jets to that of the radio lobes (which store all the particles that have passed through the jet channels) to show that this method can be used to indicate the presence of supermassive binary black holes.
"We have studied the jets under different conditions for a long time with computer simulations." In this first systematic comparison to the high resolution radio maps of the most powerful radio sources, we were surprised to find signatures compatible with the precession of the jets at the same time. three quarters of the sources, "said lead author Martin Krause, a lecturer at the university.
The fact that the most powerful jets are associated with binary black holes could have significant consequences on the formation of stars in galaxies. the stars form from cold gas, the jets heat this gas and thus suppress the formation of stars.
A jet that is always heading in the same direction only heats up a limited amount of gas nearby. However, the jets of the binary black holes change direction continuously.
As a result, they can heat a lot more gas, thus much more effectively suppressing star formation and thus helping to maintain the number of stars in galaxies within the observed limits, astronomers explained.
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