Yale: Milky Way's SMBH May Have 'Unseen' Siblings
Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 5:31 pm
Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole May Have 'Unseen' Siblings
Yale University | 2018 Apr 24
Wandering Supermassive Black Holes in Milky-Way-Mass Halos - Michael Tremmel et al
Yale University | 2018 Apr 24
Astronomers are beginning to understand what happens when black holes get the urge to roam the Milky Way.Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Typically, a supermassive black hole (SMBH) exists at the core of a massive galaxy. But sometimes SMBHs may “wander” throughout their host galaxy, remaining far from the center in regions such as the stellar halo, a nearly spherical area of stars and gas that surrounds the main section of the galaxy.
Astronomers theorize that this phenomenon often occurs as a result of mergers between galaxies in an expanding universe. A smaller galaxy will join with a larger, main galaxy, depositing its own, central SMBH onto a wide orbit within the new host.
In a new study ... researchers ... predict that galaxies with a mass similar to the Milky Way should host several supermassive black holes.
The team used a new, state-of-the-art cosmological simulation, Romulus, to predict the dynamics of SMBHs within galaxies with better accuracy than previous simulation programs. ...
Wandering Supermassive Black Holes in Milky-Way-Mass Halos - Michael Tremmel et al
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 857(2):L22 (20 Apr 2018) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aabc0a
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1802.06783 > 19 Feb 2018 (v1), 23 Apr 2018 (v2)