Posted 06.13.2011 at 5:40 pm
17 Comments
Markarian 739
In visible light, Markarian 739 resembles a smiling face, with a pair of bright cores underscored by an arcing spiral arm. The object is really a pair of merging galaxies. Data from Swift and Chandra reveal the eastern core (left) to be a previously unknown supermassive black hole; past studies already had identified one in the western core. The two supermassive black holes are separated by about 11,000 light-years. The galaxy is 425 million light-years away.
NASA/SDSS
A nearby galaxy that looks like a smiley face harbors a dark secret: It has twin supermassive black holes, not just one. This rare find could shed light on what happens when ginormous galaxies collide.
Supermassive black holes churn at the heart of most galaxies, including our own, weighing millions of times the sun’s mass and radiating billions of times more energy. These black holes sometimes radiate so much that they’re considered active galactic nuclei, but that type is very rare, comprising only about one percent of galaxies. It’s even more unusual, then, to find a galaxy with twin AGN. This is only the second one ever found.
Astronomers think stupendously disruptive events like galaxy collisions could spur AGNs to switch on, by sending huge amounts of gas spiraling toward the pre-existing black holes. The gas gets superheated as it falls toward the event horizon, radiating X-ray energy. It stands to reason, then, that some galaxies would have two AGNs — two products of a merger that occurred some time in the past. But astronomers weren't finding any.
Researchers from the University of Maryland, the University of Hawaii and Yale University used the Burst Alert Telescope on NASA’s Swift satellite, which maps sources of intense radiation, to sniff out a possible twin. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory helped pinpoint Markarian 739’s second AGN, which was invisible in ultraviolet, visible and radio wavelengths.
Astronomers have long known that the eastern nucleus of the merging Markarian 739 formation contains an active black hole nucleus — now they know the western half, or the right eye in the smiley face, has one, too. The twins are about 11,000 light years apart, or a third of the distance separating our solar system from the center of the Milky Way. A paper about the new twin will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
We look forward to the day when they combine into one uber-ginormous supermassive black hole, though it'll be sad when the black hole smiley face ceases to smile back at us.
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every galaxy has a blackhole at the center...
every douche has a douche at the douche...
lol. a smiley face. its funny because its so violent and chaotic at the center. black holes harbor other universes. many parallel dimensions to our own.
This could be a PKE crossrip of epic proportions.
We do not know for sure whether every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center or not. More and more are found all the time that do, but given the endless galaxies out there, it seems there's bound to be some irregular ones that do not.
@JediMindset...other universes and parallel demensions are still theoretical but probably exist, blackholes harboring other universes is pure speculation
Does anyone else think that there should be "Don't Panic" written in stars underneath this galaxy?
Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978
"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC
As I look up at the stars and wonder if there anyone out there. Now we have confirmation there is and they are SMILING TOO! :) Of course if you look at anything hard enough and long enough you can see anything. They've seen Elvis at the supermarket, Jesus in a potato.
Rebecca,
So which one is it? Your caption states that the the eastern core black hole was just discovered and it was known that the western core contained one.
Your last paragraph states the opposite. Please advise.
@drchuck1
maybe a real life star wars universe exists in one. maybe they told George Lucas about their different civilizations. remember how in star wars there are different kinds of races. jabba the hut ewoks, wookies. wow it fills my mind with joy knowing that one day we will finally be told the truth.
all galaxies have twin agn's. this one is unusual because they can see what they think is 2, but its really 4. Remember when the earth was flat? some things may be "theoretical" because you cant prove it enough for the masses,but we are using extremely primitive devices to peer at objects very far away. Matter is emitted from the center of the galaxy. This wont be proven for a long time.(hopefully im wrong about the timeframe)
like 50% of the comments I read on popsci are subject to Poe's Law (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law)
"maybe a real life star wars universe exists in one."
lmfao!
One of those Black Holes is closer than the other...
@B.V., he can't be serious?
@drchuck1,
He certainly can be serious... it's just impossible for me to tell whether people are being sarcastic or whether they really believe the things they type.
That's what Poe's Law says, basically, that it's impossible to distinguish a radical statement from a well-made parody of the radical belief the maker of the statement espouses.
it is difficult at times
So given the distance away, these galaxies have already merged perhaps? It would be interesting if they could make a good model of what might happen over time.