Binary Black Holes Found Nearby Indicate Violent Mergers

Two supermassive black holes in the quasar that is located the nearest to our planet earth, Markarian 231, has been discovered, according to hngn.

It was found through NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, showing supermassive black holes bring together their masses through "violent mergers", explains the University of Oklahoma. The black hole duo was hence found in a quasar, which happens to be an active galaxy with a center that is illuminated.

"We are extremely excited about this finding because it not only shows the existence of a close binary black hole in Mrk 231, but also paves a new way to systematically search binary black holes via the nature of their ultraviolet light emission," said Youjun Lu of the National Astronomical Observatories of China.

The findings were made by a team of researchers looking at ultraviolet radiation from the center of the Markarian 231 taken from Hubble observations. These observations were applied to a model of the spectrum of the galaxy, which helped them to determine the existence of the "two black holes".

"The structure of our universe, such as those giant galaxies and clusters of galaxies, grows by merging smaller systems into larger ones, and binary black holes are natural consequences of these mergers of galaxies," said Xinyu Dai, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences.

The discovery shows that with time, the two black holes---of which one was felt to be bigger, will come closer, collide and merge. It would result in a quasar with a supermassive black hole.

The findings were published in a recent edition of The Astrophysical Journal.