Astronomers Prepare For Cataclysmic Collision of Two Supermassive Black Holes

 

In a perfect world astronomers would have

 unlimited access to wonderful telescopes and unfettered resources to scour the universe being imperfect however means that researchers must scramble to reserve observation time

 for unique celestial events and glimpses of the out of the ordinary so when a cue forms for a never-before-seen spectacle that may light up the cosmos with an explosion of light we naturally pay attention like now it's two super massive black holes with a combined mass of hundreds of millions of our sons and they appear to be on a collision course with each other what their cataclysmic encounter will unleash is anyone's guess but it's very likely to be spectacular welcome to Science Reads in today's article we peer across deep space at an event that has long been predicted but never witnessed by humanity what will we see for ages events astronomers witness in real time have been as much about the luck of looking at the right place at the right time as any warning that an unusual event is coming on top of that it seems highly unlikely that a telescope first put into commission almost three-quarters of a century ago would make a meaningful contribution

 to the study of black holes perhaps the

 universe's most bizarre showcase of the laws of physics but in 2017 the 48-inch Samuel Oschin telescope at California's Palomar Observatory was dramatically upgraded with the ZTF camera capable of covering 47 square degrees of sky per image and now with nightly surveys of the entire visible sky looking for the rare and the exotic astronomers have detected what may well be a collision of historic proportions a team led by Ning Jiang of the university of Science and Technology of China working with data glean from the ZTF camera at Palomar stumbled across the rare and the exotic my first instinct was that it must be related to a pair of supermassive black holes he said even more unusual is what appears to be happening as soon as 100 days from now the two

 supermassive black holes may collide

 tick tock that's the sound of the cosmic countdown the team believes it detected in the center of a galaxy some 1.2 billion light years from earth the detection of periodic cycles began when Ning Jiang noticed a unique behavior with the light curve beaming from the galaxy the signal was interpreted to be from a binary pair of black holes that are the active galactic nucleus which dramatically heat material drawn in and cause the galaxy to shine extremely brightly very interesting in its own right but a small number of these have been detected by x-ray telescopes and they're hundreds of light years apart and won't collide for millions if not billions of years and astronomers say the likelihood of seeing such a collision from earth is perhaps one in ten thousand in any given year at least until this year now we switch gears from very interesting to a possible once in ten millennia chance to witness it actually happen here's why the cycles detected by the team shortened dramatically over just three years going from one year to only one month their observations were confirmed by NASA's orbiting Neil Garrill Swift Observatory the team says data shows the black holes with a combined mass of hundreds of millions of suns get as close to each other as the sun in Pluto and will collide in the next 100 to 300 days and their just released study states the supermassive black hole binaries are in the last stage of orbital evolution gravitational wave radiation drives the binary in spiral and produces the loudest siren awaiting to be detected the team expects a burst across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays to radio waves and a massive emission of neutrinos in plain english grab a bag of popcorn we might be in for a show predictions vary for the end of this cosmic countdown anywhere from three months to three years from now and exactly what will be seen as anybody's guess since this incredible event has only been theorized by astronomers they've been predicted for years just never witnessed in real time Andrew fabian professor at the institute of astronomy at the university of Cambridge says it's a singularly unique opportunity to see something holy new he said it's never been witnessed before at the moment there's quite a lot of gas but the violent acceleration of the orbits as they approach each other may cause a massive outflow of gas this could be quite luminous or could even obscure the situation astronomers don't quite know how supermassive black holes attain their massive size with some reaching 20 billion times the mass of the sun this may be the chance to see if the enormous size of some of the giants is in fact due to merging with other black holes these monsters exist in the center of nearly if not all galaxies and as galaxies merge it's very likely their black holes get caught up with each other's gravitational forces

 and the collision could be spectacular

 on a scale we can only imagine tick tock

 as can be expected astronomers are racing

 to lock in telescope observation time in the coming weeks and months team member Juan Yang of the perimeter institute in waterloo Canada says we've seen people acting pretty fast all over the planet researchers are pouring over radio observation archives to confirm the signal and looming event if the boom happens says Emma of Concrete Observatory in Hungary it will confirm many things there should be a huge burst across the electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays to radio fabian has applied for time on nasa's neutron star interior composition explorer an x-ray telescope on the international space station he says if it's true then it's important to get as many observations as possible now to see what it's doing rare events do happen and yang predicts many cosmological loose ends will be tied up if astronomers are able to witness this momentous merging he says you'll be able to test all your predictions using this single example so what do you think about the possible collision of two supermassive black holes will it fizzle or will it swing open doors to understanding more about our amazing universe tell us in the comments