Signs of Supermassive Black Holes Merging Spotted

London: Astronomers have found evidence for a large number of double supermassive black holes, the likely precursors of gigantic black hole merging events. This confirms the current understanding of cosmological evolution — that galaxies and their associated black holes merge over time, forming bigger and bigger galaxies and black holes, said an international team of scientists led by astronomers from the University of Hertfordshire, UK.

For the research, the team looked at radio maps of powerful jet sources and found signs that would usually be present when looking at black holes that are closely orbiting each other. Supermassive black holes emit powerful jets. When supermassive binary black holes orbit, it causes the jet emanating from the nucleus of a galaxy to periodically change its direction.

Astronomers studied the direction that these jets are emitted in, and variances in these directions; they compared the direction of the jets with the one of the radio lobes (that store all the particles that ever went through the jet channels) to demonstrate that this method can be used to indicate the presence of supermassive binary black holes. (IANS)