First-ever discovery of a “black hole twins”: The phantom shadows
A group of leading scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Kavil Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research in the US has made an unprecedented discovery – the first-known “black hole twins”. This phenomenon reveals that the material disk surrounding black holes may hold more secrets than previously thought.
These peculiar twin shadows are comprised of a monstrous black hole and a smaller one, creating a perplexing spectacle that has left scientists baffled. The gargantuan black hole weighs approximately 50 million times the mass of our Sun and resides at the center of a galaxy located 800 million light-years away from Earth. It emits gas clouds into space every 8.5 days.
This extraordinary phenomenon appears to originate from the accretion disk of the black hole. The superheated gaseous ring swirls around the object, enabling us to “see” the black hole itself, an entity that is entirely dark and invisible by nature.
According to the findings published in the journal Science Advances, MIT researchers have finally unraveled the cause of this anomaly. It turns out that they were not observing just one black hole, but rather two.
The smaller black hole roams around the larger one, occasionally crossing through the accretion disk of its massive counterpart and causing this tumultuous activity. The discovery of the second black hole came as a complete surprise to the lead author, Dheeraj Pasham.
“We were scratching our heads for months until theoretical physicists from Czech Republic came and hinted at a secondary black hole, seemingly explaining all the characteristics of this system,” says Professor Pasham.
This revelation allowed the authors to construct models to examine this hypothesis, and it turned out to be entirely plausible.
This breakthrough has opened up new avenues for astronomical research: exploring the accretion disks of black holes, where a world full of mysteries could potentially remain hidden.
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