The black holes have large and nearly equal masses, with one only 3% more massive than the other. We regret the error.Numerical simulation of two black holes that inspiral and merge, emitting gravitational waves. In turn, that could help them unlock some big mysteries around how supermassive black holes grow, sustain entire galaxies, and create environments where the laws of physics are pushed to the limit.Ĭorrection 8/3/21: The initial version of this story incorrectly stated that Einstein made his prediction in 1963. So although it’s early, Wilkins and his team are hopeful that detecting and studying more of these x-ray echoes from behind the bend could help us create partial or even full pictures of distant supermassive black holes. It’s not going to be possible to take images of all of them the way scientists used the Event Horizon Telescope to capture the shadow of a supermassive bla ck hole in galaxy M87. "While this observation doesn't change our general picture of black hole accretion, it is a nice confirmation that general relativity is at play in these systems," says Erin Kara, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved with the study.ĭespite the name, supermassive black holes are so far away that they really just look like single points of light, even with state-of-the-art instruments. “It’s the first time we really see the direct signature of the way light bends all the way behind the black hole into our line of sight, because of the way black hole warps space around itself,” says Wilkins. The biggest implication of the new findings is that they confirm what Albert Einstein predicted as part of his theory of general relativity-the way light ought to bend around gargantuan objects like supermassive black holes. The signals were found using two different space-based telescopes optimized to detect x-rays in space: NuSTAR, which is run by NASA, and XMM-Newton, which is run by the European Space Agency. But because the black hole bends the space around it, the x-ray reflections are also bent around it, which means we can spot them. While Wilkins and his team were observing this black hole, they noticed that the corona appeared to be “flashing.” These flashes, caused by x-ray pulses reflecting off the massive disk of gas, were coming from behind the black hole’s shadow-a place that is normally hidden from view. “If you want to understand how galaxies form, you really need to understand these processes outside the black hole that are able to release these enormous amounts of energy and power, these amazingly bright light sources that we’re studying,” says Dan Wilkins, an astrophysicist at Stanford University and the lead author of the study. And because supermassive black holes release so much energy, they are essentially powerhouses that allow galaxies to grow around them. The release of energy by black holes, sometimes in the form of x-rays, is an absurdly extreme process. It will allow for better mapping of how things fall into black holes and how black holes bend the space time around them." "Although we have seen the signature of x-ray echoes before, until now it has not been possible to separate out the echo that comes from behind the black hole and gets bent around into our line of sight. "This is a really exciting result," says Edward Cackett, an astronomer at Wayne State University who was not involved with the study.
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