[ad_1]
There is a “dance” in space that happens twice every 12 years and the protagonists are two black holes.
And by studying one of those events, astronomers were able to test the key consequences of the theories of the physicist Alberto Einstein.
One of these objects is a true colossus, it is a hole that weighs 18,000 million times the mass of our Sun. And the other is not that big, “only” about 150 million times the solar mass.
And heScientists were able to predict their interactions very accurately.
They did this by including its warping effects in space-time and by assuming that the largest hole had a smooth “surface”.
The pair of black holes, from the galaxy known as OJ 287, it is about 3.5 billion light years from Earth.
A dance that repeats
Scientists have long followed the sudden glow that occurs in this system and occurs twice every 12 years.
The burst of energy is equivalent to a trillion soles that light up at once in the hole’s host galaxy.
The best explanation for this extraordinary behavior is that the smallest object crashes into the disk of gas and dust that collects on its largest companion routinely, causing the material to reach very high temperatures.
But these events are irregular. They take place every two every 12 years, but sometimes a year passes from the previous one and other times up to 10.
This speaks of the complexity of the orbit than draw the smallest hole around the big, a factor that the research team has incorporated into a highly sophisticated model.
“The orbit of the smallest black hole has (a movement of) precession. That is why the times of the impacts vary, “explained Professor Mauri Valtonen, from the University of Turku in Finland.
The precession or precession movement is associated with the change of direction in the space that the instantaneous axis of rotation of a body experiences. To give an idea, it is the oscillation movement performed by a spinning top.
“Back in 1996 we had a model that more or less predicted what would happen. But now we are getting more precise“Valtonen told the BBC.
One of the important parameters that the updated model takes into account is the energy that radiates from the system in the form of gravitational waves.
The very simplified theory of general relativity holds that gravity arises from the curvature of space-time. Suffice it to imagine the universe as a taut fabric whose geometric shape varies depending on the mass of the celestial bodies that are arranged on it.
Under this premise, the orbits of some objects over others do not repeat their trajectory, as formulated by the gravitation defined by the physicist Isaac Newton, but they follow a precession movement, which means that the trajectory changes with each turn.
Under the supermassive conditions of the OJ 287, the waves have a significant influence on the way the system operates.
NASASpitzer was the only telescope that could capture the exact moment of impact.
A fortunate observation
The great test for this last model took place on July 31 of last year, when was identified the Latest phenomenon within 2.5 hours provided by the equations.
The event was captured by the infrared telescope Spitzer, from the US space agency NASA.
This was a fortunate observation as it turned out that OJ 287 was on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth at the time, and therefore out of sight of ground facilities.
On the other hand, Spitzer’s distance from Earth (160 million km) placed him in a privileged position.
“When I first checked the visibility of OJ 287, I was surprised to find that the Spitzer caught it just the day the first glow was predicted to take place,” said Seppo Laine, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA. .UU., Who oversees the Spitzer’s observations.
“It was extremely fortunate that we were able to capture the peak of this impact with the Spitzer, because no other man-made instrument has been able to accomplish this feat in the specific moment. “
Theorem “hairless”
BBC The renowned professor Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018, developed the “hairless” theorem of black holes.
Another detail that the model took into account was the physical characteristics of the largest black hole. Specifically, its rotation.
Several scientists, including the late Stephen Hawking, developed what became known as the “hairless” theorem of black holes.
This essentially states that the surface, or “event horizon”, of a black hole along its axis of rotation is symmetrical: There are no lumps or bumps.
It is believed that the observation of OJ 287 is the best proof so far of the “hairless” theorem.
Professor Achamveedu Gopakumar from the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in India worked on the model on gravitational waves together with graduate student Lankeswar Dey.
The teacher talked about his “euphoria” when seeing arrive the data of the Spitzer. Now he’s waiting for OJ 287 to be photographed by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which captured the first image of a black hole last year.
“With the EHT observations were made in both 2017 and 2018. The other campaigns are suspended (due to the coronavirus) and we hope to have time during the 2021 campaign,” he told the BBC.
IT MAY INTEREST YOU
[ad_2]
