- 4457 - MERGING BLACKHOLES - the center of galaxies? - The hearts of galaxies can force black holes to collide. At the hearts of all large galaxies lie cosmic monsters called supermassive black holes, enormous voids that swirl around everything in the galaxies themselves.
--------------- 4457 - MERGING BLACKHOLES - the center of galaxies?
The swirly behavior of blackholes influences
things like the disks of matter the galactic titan feasts on, stars and their
systems, and, even other black holes, smaller, stellar mass ones.
-
- It would also appear that such behavior
around supermassive black holes can cause cosmic "traffic jams," and
that these jams could actually be integral in slowing down the orbits of
stellar-mass black holes. And, no longer zipping around, the affected black
holes can be forced to collide, merge and create a larger daughter black hole.
-
- Then the immense gravitational influence of
the traffic-jam supermassive black hole, a beast that can boast a mass millions
(even billions) of times that of the sun, this process repeats. That results in
even more black-hole collisions that create larger and larger stellar-mass
black holes over time, with masses between three and a few hundred solar
masses.
-
- This means the environment around a
supermassive black holes is perfect for facilitating the growth of other black
holes. Some supermassive black holes are
surrounded by a disk of gas and dust called an accretion disk; it is this disk
which gradually feeds the black hole. The gravity of supermassive black holes
generates powerful tidal forces in those accretion disks that cause them to
glow brightly, creating a region called an “Active Galactic Nucleus” (AGN).
-
- When stellar-mass black holes sit in these
accretion disks, their interactions with the gas surrounding them can cause
them to migrate through the disk. This leads to stellar-mass black holes
accumulating in regions they call "migration traps." This makes the
possibility of two stellar mass black holes encountering each other, colliding
and merging in these regions due to the traffic jam greater than anywhere else
in the surrounding galaxy.
-
- Thermal effects play a crucial role in this
process, influencing the location and stability of migration traps. One
implication is that we don’t see migration traps occurring in active galaxies
with large luminosity.
-
- Because these mergers create a burst of tiny
ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, the findings could help
advance gravitational wave astronomy down the line, too.
-
-
May 4, 2024 MERGING
BLACKHOLES - the center of galaxies? 4457
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--------------------- --- Sunday, May 5, 2024
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