Strange, sinister and hungry, super massive black holes they lurk in the secret hearts of perhaps every great galaxy in the visible Universe. The resident dark heart of our Milky Way is named after him Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius-a-star)Prayed Sgr A*, To abreviate. Now it is an ancient and peaceful gravitational beast, waking only occasionally from its slumber to devour an unfortunate morsel, such as a broken star or a cloud of doomed gas, that has strayed too close to its waiting maw. super massive black holessuch as Sgr A*may have impressive masses of millions to billions of times that of our Sun. But the old resident of our galaxy black hole it’s a relatively puny beast, weighing “only” millions, rather than billions, of times the solar mass. Even if it’s ours super massive black hole residing within our Milky Way, it still harbors, deep within its hidden heart, many strange secrets. In April 2018, another of its many mysteries was revealed when a team of astronomers announced their new findings that our galaxy super massive the dark heart can have “invisible” brothers.
As a result of this new research, astronomers are now beginning to understand what happens when black holes develop Travelling passion. Despite super massive The beasts usually inhabit the heart of a massive galaxy, like ours, but this is not always the case. Unfortunately, these strange gravitational monsters sometimes feel the need to roam their host galaxy, and during their journeys they lurk hungrily far from the galactic center, in regions as distant as the stellar halo. stellar halos they are nearly spherical areas of a galaxy that contain stars and gas. Thesis halos surround the primary section of a galaxy.
Today many astronomers propose that these wandering black holes they are the result of mergers between galaxies in an expanding Cosmos. A smaller galaxy will sometimes join a larger member of its own species and deposit its own resident as a result. super massive beast in a wide orbit within the new (and much larger) host galaxy.
Sagittarius A* And Others Of Its Kind
The first generation of black holes inhabit the Universe both created and destroyed. For one, they mercilessly devoured any object unfortunate enough to travel too close to their ravenous, waiting maw. On the other hand, they simultaneously created jets of high-energy particles and radiation, which they produced as a result of their terrible table manners. The jets created by these gravitational monsters can be millions of light-years long, and many astronomers think they are the triggers that form successive generations of baby stars. Basically, this means that the first black holes appearing in the ancient Universe served as the “seeds” from which galaxies eventually formed. According to this model, galaxies evolved to swirl majestically around their resident. super massive beast. In fact, the essential theses black holes they were necessary ingredients in the mysterious recipe responsible for galactic evolution, and they still are. In our own Solar System, black holes they are responsible for the birth of our Sun, Earth and our very existence.
Crushed stars and disrupted gas clouds form the remnants that eventually collapse in the turbulent vortex that surrounds a super massive beast. This crushed banquet of spinning material forms a huge disk that surrounds the hungry and gluttonous black hole. The disk itself, named accretion diskit gets hotter and hotter as time goes by, especially when it gets sucked into the merciless vortex near the point of no return, the black holes event horizon Tea event horizonfrom which nothing can escape, not even light, lies in the innermost region of the dazzling accretion disk.
super massive dark hearts, and its surroundings, swirling accretion disks, they may be (at least) as big as our entire Solar System, and are described by their enormous masses, greedy appetites, and careless eating habits. Tea super massive black holes that torment the hearts of the galaxies in the Universe today, as Sgr A*they are often dormant in their old age, displaying only a shadow of the ancient appetites they once had when both they and the Cosmos were much younger.
Once, long ago Sgr A* dazzled the ancient Universe with his bright light like a hot young man quasar. quasars are the accretion disks surrounding especially voracious and active super massive dark hearts, that dance the fantastic light in the primordial Universe. Tea quasars that illuminated the ancient Cosmos were young, fiery, and especially bright active galactic nuclei (AGN) which were propelled by the unfortunate material falling inward from the surroundings accretion disk. Astronomers search the skies for celestial objects that dazzled like fireflies when the Cosmos was still young, and quasi-stellar objects (quasars) they are so dazzling old objects.
Sgr A* it is itself invisible to the prying eyes of astronomers. This is because, like everyone else black holes, it does not send energy into space at all, and it is totally dark. The dark sleeping heart of our Galaxy, like other old black holes, shows little of the greedy appetite of its young quasar internship Indeed, in the case of Sgr A*It’s been a long time between dinners. Sgr A* it enjoyed its last great feast about six million years ago, when it greedily ate a very unfortunate, large, doomed, and interrupted plume of gas that fell. After this terrible party, the neglected and now satisfied black hole emitted a huge bubble of gas equivalent to millions of solar masses. This bubble of gas now billows both below and above the dark heart of our Milky Way. These after-party bubbles, called fermi bubbles, were first detected by NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2010.
black holes they are compact and dense regions of space, with gravitational claws so powerful that they snatch nothing they can escape its gravitational kiss of death. Sgr A* it has squeezed the mass of 4.5 million suns into a tiny patch of space at the heart of our galaxy.
Clearly super massive black holes they are strange beasts that inhabit the celestial zoo. Sgr A* It’s surrounded by a brilliant cluster of newborn stars, some of which have been unlucky enough to plunge just a few billion miles from where the hungry beast awaits its dinner.
our galaxy super massive beast is calm now, enjoying a peaceful old age. like other old black holes accumulates at a very slow rate. This makes it difficult for astronomers to distinguish them from the dark galactic hearts in which they lurk. Sgr A* Provide an instructive gift – it’s an exception to this frustrating rule. This is because curious astronomers can get a much closer look at its comparatively soft X-ray emission.
black holesIn general, they can be large or small, they do not come in a single size. These celestial objects can be defined as an area of space-time where the merciless pull of gravity has become so powerful that not even light can escape, once it has been trapped. The pull of gravity has become so strong because matter has been squashed into a very small space. Squeeze enough material into a small enough region, and a black hole will be born every time.
In addition to super massive black holesthere are smaller stellar mass black holes inhabiting the Universe. Thesis relatively little black holes form on the funeral pyre of a very massive star that has reached the end of the stellar path. The former heavy star has collapsed in the raging fires of a supernova conflagration that has driven it into oblivion. The supernova explosion heralds the end of the fiery life of a massive star burning hydrogen. main sequence of the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram of Stellar Evolution. After black hole of stellar mass has risen from the wreckage of its parent star, it can continue to gain more weight when it greedily and greedily eats any doomed object unfortunate enough to wander too close to where it expects.
Our The secret brothers of the supermassive black hole
In the new study, published in the April 24, 2018 issue of the astrophysical journal letters, astronomers from Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), the University of Washington (Seattle), the Paris Institute of Astrophysics (France) and University College London (United Kingdom), predict that galaxies with a mass similar to that of our Milky Way should harbor several supermassive black holes.
To reach this conclusion, the scientists used a new, state-of-the-art cosmological simulation, called Romulus. Romulus helped scientists predict the dynamics of super massive black holesthat inhabits the heart of galaxies, with greater precision than previous supercomputer simulation programs.
“It is extremely unlikely that any wanderer super massive black hole it will come close enough to our Sun to have some impact on our Solar System. We estimate that a close approach of one of these wanderers that can affect our Solar System should occur every 100 billion years or so, or nearly 10 times the age of the Universe,” explained study lead author Dr. Michael Tremmel in a report on Apr. 24, 2018 Yale University press release. Dr. Tremmel is a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Dr. Tremmel continued to notice that since he was wandering super massive black holes they are predicted to dwell far from the centers of galaxies and outside galaxies discs, it is unlikely that they will continue to accumulate more gas. This is the reason why they are invisible. “We are currently working to better quantify how we could infer its presence indirectly,” he added.
The co-authors of the study are Dr. Fabio Governato (University of Washington), Dr. Marta Volonteri (Paris Institute of Astrophysics), Dr. Andrew Pontzen (University College London) and Dr. Thomas Quinn (University of Washington).
The study is part of blue waters computer project supported by the National Science Foundation and the University of Illinois.