Scientists are expecting a major merging event of two supermassive black holes in the galaxy SDSS J1430+2303 that is about 1 billion light-years away in the next three years. They observed that the period of mutual rotation of the supermassive black hole binary is constantly reducing and now predicts an imminent collision with each other.
In cosmic terms, "imminent" means that the event could stretch on for whole lifetimes, but scientists calculated that the collision could happen in a few years. The supermassive black holes have a combined mass of 200 million Suns and their collision is now one of the most highly anticipated cosmic events in modern astronomy.
Two Supermassive Black Holes Predicted to Collide Within Three Years: Here's What to Expect
Colliding Black Holes
Scientists first detected colliding black holes in 2015 that launching a new era for astronomy. Science Alert previously reported that an international team of physicists has confirmed the existence of gravitational waves that Albert Einstein once theorize. The discovery marks one of the biggest astrophysical discoveries of the past century that improves the understanding of how the Universe works.
The team from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected the gravitational wave signal on September 14, 2015, and announced it to the press on February 2016.
Discovering the gravitational waves are exciting because it is the last major prediction of the general theory of relativity of Einstein that needs to be confirmed. It helped scientists know how the universe is shaped by mass.
Gravitational researcher David Blair said in a statement that gravitational waves are like sound waves that travel through space at the speed of light. Since then, scientists continued to detect gravitational waves that send rippling through space-time. Moreso, it enabled scientists to discover supermassive black holes that are 99% more likely to collide violently.
Earlier this year, Live Science reported that the black holes that share the name PKS 2131-021 have moved steadily toward each other for 100 million years and now share a binary orbit. NASA thinks that about 10,000 years from now, the two black holes will merge and send gravitational waves that will surge across the universe.
What Will Happen in the Merging of Two Blackholes?
In the new paper, titled "X-Ray View of a Merging Supermassive Black Hole Binary Candidate SDSSJ1430+2303: Results From the First ~200 Days Observations" published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, and available on arXiv, researchers described a supermassive black hole binary that will collide in the next three years.
Unlike PKS 2131-021 which will likely collide in 10,000 years, Science Alert reported that the supermassive black hole binary at the center of the galaxy SDSS J1430+2303 is predicted to merge in a few years.
Although the scientists are still not sure how they will see the collision, they said that the ripples generated by the inspiraling and colliding supermassive black holes. Even without an instrument that can detect low-frequency gravitational waves, they expect to at least see an immense outburst of light across the spectrum.
The data from the outburst could tell scientists how the event played out. Until now, scientists have no clue as to how supermassive black holes get so big and rely on a few clues to understand that one possibility could be due to binary mergers.
This brings scientists to J1430+2303, which they observed to be behaving strangely. They noticed that the oscillations in the galactic nucleus grew shorter and shorter from a period of about a year to only one month now. The team is confident that something strange is happening at the black holes, whether it could be a massive collision or not.
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