Blinking Quasar Gives Away Merger of Two Supermassive Black Holes

Sky-gazers made a rare discovery in a quasar that blinked periodically when it shouldn't have. That's when they realized they were looking at two black holes undergoing merger.

According to Business Standard, researchers at University of Maryland have presented a study in the journal Astrophysical Letters where they have argued that periodic pulsating light from pulsars can be attributed to two supermassive black holes merging to form a binary. Such a binary would cause cyclic absorption of matter causing the periodic blinking of the pulsar.

"Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) should be an inevitable consequence of the hierarchical growth of massive galaxies through mergers and the strongest sirens of gravitational waves (GWs) in the cosmos. Yet, their direct detection has remained elusive due to the compact orbital separations of gravitationally bound SMBHBs," researchers wrote.

The quasar was identified through Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) Medium Deep Survey and imaging a specific portion of the sky using the Hawaii based Panoramic Survey Telescope.

The quasar in subject, PSO J334.2028+01.4075, caught the team's attention as its emissions were periodic. Light emissions from quasars are not known to any have rhythm. The merged binary that is causing the quasar could have the masses of 10 billion suns.