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Hubble captures collision inside supermassive black hole jet

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collison inside black hole jetAstronomers for the first time ever has witnessed a rare event in deep space, where a collision between two jets of matter racing outward from a black hole at 98 percent  of the speed of the light.

The Hubble Space Telescope has witnessed the collision.

The black hole in the radio galaxy NGC 3862 is located roughly 260 million light years away from our Milky Way.

The jets emanating from galaxies can appear to be racing toward Earth faster than the speed of light, a condition that is forbidden by the Special Theory of Relativity. This violation of laws of physics is due to an optical illusion, and astronomers hope this new finding helps them learn more about this strange effect.

Extra galactic jets, which shoot material from the active nucleus of a galaxy in a thin beam, are not well understood.

Analysis of the new data suggests that collisions within the beams accelerate material within the structure and increase the brightness of the gas.

Hubble has observed galaxy NCG 3862 over the course of 20 years. These images are used by the astronomers to create a video showing movement of the material away from the elliptical galaxy.

The jets emanating from NCG 3862 were first spotted in the constellation of Leo by astronomers using the Hubble telescope in 1992. They have a bumpy structure, much like a pearl necklace.

The video created by the astronomers showed one of the knots, appearing to move at the superluminal speed of seven times the speed of light, catching up and colliding with a slower moving clump of material. As the two collide, the event resulted in increased brightness from the scene of the accident. This behavior is expected to continue for several decades.

Eileen Meyer of the Space Telescope Science Institute or STScI said, “Something like this has never been seen before in an extragalactic jet. This will allow us a very rare opportunity to see how the energy of the collision is dissipated into radiation.”

Newly formed stars and black holes emit jets of gas in a fine stream, similar to a laser.

Astronomers believe that the gas comprises these features originally falls onto the stars or near the black hole, where the material is super heated. It is then ejected away from the body through acceleration delivered by the rotation of the central object.

This stream of material is then focused into a beam by the force of magnetic fields around the star or black hole. At the beginning of this process, if the gas falling onto the star arrives in clumps, it can result in pulses of material at the end, producing the necklace like structure seen in the NGC 3862.

Scientists found evidence of binary black hole

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black holeA theory that black holes at the center of the two galaxies will end up as binary black hole, where the two black holes are locked together by gravitational forces in close orbit around each other, can be proved by the flashing of light from the deep space.

Astronomers at the University of Maryland say that they have detected a pulsing quasar which proves the existence of the binary black hole.

Suvi Gezari, astronomy Professor and coauthor of the study said, “We believe we have observed two super massive black holes in closer proximity than ever before.”

Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts if the binary black hole is very close to each other, then they will emit gravitational waves, and the scientists have detected the gravitational waves.

Black hole is present at the center of the galaxy and they are surrounded by matter and dust, as the black holes have huge gravitational force the matter is attracted by the black hole, and it is heated and accelerated to a point such that it emits massive amounts of energy creating brightest energy sources known as quasars.

Scientist said that the binary black hole is where two black holes orbit each other and the consumption of the matter by the black hole will be cyclical, with a resulting periodical dimming and brightening of the quasar.

The astronomers have detected such quasar using the -STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey telescope in Hawaii.

They found a quasar PSO J334.2028+01.4075, with a massive black hole of around 10 billion solar masses and they were emitting periodic flash of light repeating every 542 days.

The majority of the quasars are not regular and arrhythmic, so the clock like precision of the quasar is a strong evidence that they are binary black hole which are emitting such pattern of quasar which are generally exhibited by binary black holes.

Tingting Liu, graduate astronomy student and study’s first author said, “The discovery of a compact binary candidate supermassive black hole system … which appears to be at such close orbital separation, adds to our limited knowledge of the end stages of the merger between supermassive black holes.”

As technology develops larger and larger telescope becomes available, and then survey of much larger space could potentially locate thousands of merging galaxies.

Lui said, “What’s really cool is that we may be able to watch the orbital separation of these supermassive black holes get smaller and smaller until they merge.”

NASA’s Hubble telescope discovers green ghostly structures of quasars

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green-structures-quasarsQuasars are furthest objects away from our galaxy that can be seen. Quasar is short for quasi-stellar radio source or quasi-stellar object.

Telescope is needed to view the objects.

Quasars emit light waves, radio waves and x-rays.

Quasars are super massive black hole surrounded by the disk like structured gas. It attracts galaxies, gas and stars with its gravity and these objects are sucked into the black hole resulting in the massive collision and radiating light and energy, this collision results in flares which is a distinct characteristic of quasars.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of the short lived ghosts of quasars that flickered into life and fade away.

They are thin, green objects and bright masses of light and energy.

In 2007, the first green object was discovered by the by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel.

The ethereal wisps which are glowing outside the galaxy are believed to be illuminated by the ultraviolet radiation emitted by the black hole which lies in the center of the galaxy.

Quasars are the most active of theses galaxy cores and any material fallen under the gravity are heated to a point where brilliant light shine into the space. This light is produced by the superheated gas encircling the black hole.

“However, the quasars are not bright enough now to account for what we’re seeing; this is a record of something that happened in the past,” said Bill Keel of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, who initiated the Hubble investigation of the distant objects.

The behavior of the galaxies having energetic core is very puzzling and these images throw some light on it. The quasars once emitted huge energy, which they shouldn’t and this is indicated by the glowing filaments. One justification is quasars may be co-orbiting black holes and this may act like a dimmer switch.

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