The mystery of supermassive black hole mergers

But modeling has shown it to be the case it’s hard to scatter enough stars to black holes to solve the ultimate parsec problem.

Alternatively, each black hole could have a small disk of gas around it, and these disks could pick up material from the wider disk that surrounds the empty space dug up by the holes. and that in turn means that their orbital energy can leak into the wider disk.” “That seems like a very efficient solution,” Natarajan said there is a lot.”

In January, Blechan and colleagues explored the idea that a third black hole in the system can provide a solution. In some cases, when the two black holes have stalled, another galaxy can begin to merge with the first two, bringing with it an additional black hole. “You can have a strong three-body interaction.” Blecha said. “It can take energy and reduce the fusion times significantly.” In some scenarios, the lightest of the three holes is ejected, but in others, all three merge.

Tests on the horizon

The challenge now is to find out which solution is correct, or if multiple processes are at work.

Alonso-Alvarez hopes to test his idea by looking for a signal of self-interacting dark matter in future pulsar data we should see that it takes away some of the energy at distances around the parsec boundary, which in turn will result in more of low-energy gravitational waves, Alonso-Alvarez said.

Hye-Bo YuA particle physicist at the University of California, Riverside, who is a proponent of self-interacting dark mattersaid the idea is plausible. “It’s a way to look for microscopic features of dark matter,” he said. “I think it’s just fascinating.”

The European Space Agency’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) spacecraft, the Gravitational Wave Observatory, due to launch in 2035, can give us more answers. LISA will pick up the strong gravitational waves emitted by merging supermassive black holes in their final days. “With LISA, we will actually see the merging of supermassive black holes,” Pacucci said give the deceleration process’, solving the final parsing problem.

Original story reprinted with permission Quanta Magazine, editorial independent publication of Simmons Foundation whose mission is to expand public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and biological sciences.