Milky Way Apocalypse! Did a Small Black Hole Crash Into the Core Supermassive Black Hole a Few Million Years Ago?
New research shows that the Milky Way's supermassive black hole fueled a massive fiery pageant of activity including the sustained emission of some of the highest energy radiation in the universe when a smaller black hole from another galaxy smashed into it a few million years ago --a blink of the eye in cosmic timescales.
Kelly Holley-Bockelmann of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and her colleagues say their scenario could explain three puzzling phenomena. Last year, astronomers discovered a striking new feature in the Milky Way: a pair of gamma ray-emitting gas bubbles, each the size of a small galaxy, emanating from the Milky Way's center and apparently fueled by some kind of violent event at the core of the galaxy. The core also contains an unusually high abundance of newborn stars and a lower-than-expected number of elderly stars.
All three phenomena, Holley-Bockelmann says, could result from the same event: the dregs of a small satellite galaxy, housing an intermediate-mass black hole about as heavy as 10,000 suns, colliding with the Milky Way's center about 10 million years ago. The Milky Way's gravity would slowly have stripped the satellite galaxy of most of its mass since the body first began falling toward the Milky Way about a billion years after the big bang but would still be hefty enough to make a stir, the team's simulations show.
The collision would have churned up gas orbiting within the innermost 5000 light-years of the Milky Way, pushing the gas into the center, Holley-Bockelmann says. Some of the incoming gas would have fallen onto the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, generating the bubbles of gamma ray-emitting gas. Other inflowing gas would provide the raw material for making the young stars observed at the center today. And interactions between the Milky Way's black hole and the smaller one from the satellite galaxy could have flung out old stars from the center as the two black holes merged,
The astronomers conjecture that the Milky Way's supermassive black hole went back to sleep some time after this event because after it gorged itself, the beast was no longer refueled by an incoming supply of gas.
Two tests could assess the validity of the merger model, suggested study collaborator Tamara Bogdanović of the University of Maryland, College Park. If a black hole merger did fling out old stars from the Milky Way's center some 10 million years ago, they should have formed a ring or shell of high-velocity stars a few thousand light-years from the center, she notes. These stars could be detected by the Hubble Space Telescope, which has already recorded high-speed stars that lie much farther from the galactic center.
In addition, detailed simulations of the new model should be able to explain the peculiar distribution of the young stars at the center of the Milky Way. The stars appear to form two separate disks which lie nearly at right angles to each other. "How such an orbital configuration can arise is still a mystery," says Bogdanović. But the merger model might account for it by sending multiple streams of star-forming gas into the Milky Way's center at different angles.
The proposed merger may not be unique in the history of the Milky Way, the astronomers note. Simulations by other teams suggests a small galaxy may collide with the Milky Way once every few billion years. In that case, our galaxy's supermassive black hole has yet to eat its last supper.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/black-hole-collision-may-have-se.html
All three phenomena, Holley-Bockelmann says, could result from the same event: the dregs of a small satellite galaxy, housing an intermediate-mass black hole about as heavy as 10,000 suns, colliding with the Milky Way's center about 10 million years ago. The Milky Way's gravity would slowly have stripped the satellite galaxy of most of its mass since the body first began falling toward the Milky Way about a billion years after the big bang but would still be hefty enough to make a stir, the team's simulations show.
The collision would have churned up gas orbiting within the innermost 5000 light-years of the Milky Way, pushing the gas into the center, Holley-Bockelmann says. Some of the incoming gas would have fallen onto the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, generating the bubbles of gamma ray-emitting gas. Other inflowing gas would provide the raw material for making the young stars observed at the center today. And interactions between the Milky Way's black hole and the smaller one from the satellite galaxy could have flung out old stars from the center as the two black holes merged,
The astronomers conjecture that the Milky Way's supermassive black hole went back to sleep some time after this event because after it gorged itself, the beast was no longer refueled by an incoming supply of gas.
Two tests could assess the validity of the merger model, suggested study collaborator Tamara Bogdanović of the University of Maryland, College Park. If a black hole merger did fling out old stars from the Milky Way's center some 10 million years ago, they should have formed a ring or shell of high-velocity stars a few thousand light-years from the center, she notes. These stars could be detected by the Hubble Space Telescope, which has already recorded high-speed stars that lie much farther from the galactic center.
In addition, detailed simulations of the new model should be able to explain the peculiar distribution of the young stars at the center of the Milky Way. The stars appear to form two separate disks which lie nearly at right angles to each other. "How such an orbital configuration can arise is still a mystery," says Bogdanović. But the merger model might account for it by sending multiple streams of star-forming gas into the Milky Way's center at different angles.
The proposed merger may not be unique in the history of the Milky Way, the astronomers note. Simulations by other teams suggests a small galaxy may collide with the Milky Way once every few billion years. In that case, our galaxy's supermassive black hole has yet to eat its last supper.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/black-hole-collision-may-have-se.html
Comments
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We are scheduled to collide with the Andromeda galaxy in the next billion yars. I can't wait!
Posted by: bigfan | July 29, 2011 at 04:09 AM
Interesting article.
Posted by: GodParticle | July 29, 2011 at 06:19 AM
You "Can't Wait"?
Do you have a choice? =)
See you there!
Posted by: SB | July 29, 2011 at 07:33 AM
Considering the wait of a billion years, at least right now you can view a video simulation of what the merger could look like and what our Star System's travel path may end up being, all in the perspective from our night sky.
http://youtu.be/Jq_pvVilR4Y
Enjoy.
Posted by: Cosmogeist | July 29, 2011 at 09:22 AM
I will be bored to death waiting a billion years.
Black holes simply cannot collide because the equations of GTR assume a one-body problem. They weren't design to deal with two or more unlike Newtonian theory.
I can't believe physicist are THAT stupid and zombie-like!
Posted by: Roman | July 29, 2011 at 11:25 AM
In a universe that is supposedly expanding, why have so many galaxies collided?
Posted by: Who Knows | July 29, 2011 at 12:59 PM
In a universe that is supposedly expanding, why have so many galaxies collided?
Posted by: Who Knows | July 29, 2011 at 12:59 PM
It is not the space that is expanding. It is just galaxies moving around (and they collide sometimes as a result)... How cosmologists came to different (backwards) logic remains a mystery. If I were recede from you would you say that that's because the space between us somehow "expanded".
Posted by: Roman | July 30, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Could this have any fossil evidence on Earth? Like an influx of radiation? Or is it too small and far away to affect Earth's environment?
Posted by: Tom Mazanec | July 30, 2011 at 11:45 AM
It is just galaxies moving around (and they collide sometimes as a result)... How cosmologists came to different (backwards) logic remains a mystery. If I were recede from you would you say that that's because the space between us somehow "expanded".
Posted by: burberry uk | July 31, 2011 at 06:28 PM
It is just galaxies moving around (and they collide sometimes as a result)... How cosmologists came to different (backwards) logic remains a mystery. If I were recede from you would you say that that's because the space between us somehow "expanded".
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