NASA is currently monitoring an impending collision between two massive black holes within a dwarf galaxy, providing crucial insights into the development of black holes in the early universe.
NASA discovers 2 supermassive black holes on the verge of collision within a dwarf galaxy. (Source: NASA)
The United States’ space agency, NASA, announced that through the Chandra X-ray Observatory, they have detected two massive black holes in a dwarf galaxy that are on a collision course.
NASA emphasizes that this collision could provide scientists with valuable information regarding the development of black holes in the early universe.
According to NASA, dwarf galaxies are defined as galaxies containing stars with a combined mass less than approximately three billion times that of the Sun.
Astronomers have long hypothesized that dwarf galaxies merged relatively early, especially in the early universe, to evolve into the larger galaxies seen today.
However, current technology cannot observe the initial merging of dwarf galaxies as images from a distant distance are extremely faint.
A new study has applied a different method, conducting a systematic survey of deep Chandra X-ray observations and comparing them with data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite and optical data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
American astronomers have been searching for pairs of bright X-ray sources in colliding dwarf galaxies as evidence of two black holes and have found two examples: one within the Abell 133 galaxy cluster, located 760 million light-years away from Earth, and another within the Abell 1758S galaxy cluster, approximately 3.2 billion light-years from us.
According to NASA, both pairs exhibit characteristic structures of galaxy collision, and it is anticipated that they will expand our understanding of black hole development.