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In space, there is a “dance” that takes place twice every 12 years, and the main characters are two black holes.
And by studying one of these events, astronomers were able to verify the key consequences theories of the physicist Alberto Einstein,
One of these objects is a real colossus, a hole that weighs 18,000 million times the mass of our Sun. And the other is not so big, “only” about 150 million times the mass of the sun.
And heScientists were able to very accurately predict their interaction.
They did this by including the effect of deformation in space-time and assuming that the largest hole has a smooth “surface”.
A pair of black holes from the galaxy known as OJ 287, it is about 3.5 billion light years from Earth.
Dance that repeats
Scientists have long watched the sudden glow that occurs in this system and occurs twice every 12 years.
Burst of energy equivalent to a trillion soles which light up immediately in the host galaxy.
The best explanation for this unusual behavior is that the smallest object crashes into a disk of gas and dust, which regularly accumulates on its largest satellite, causing the material to reach very high temperatures.
But these events are irregular. They are held every two years every 12 years, but sometimes a year passes from the previous one, and sometimes up to 10.
It speaks of complexity orbit what draw a small hole around bigfactor that the research team incorporated into a very complex model.
“The orbit of the smallest black hole has (motion) precession. That’s why the strike times are different, ”explained Professor Mauri Waltonen of the University of Turku in Finland.
The precession or movement of the precession is associated with a change in direction in space, which experiences the instantaneous axis of rotation of the body. To give an idea, this is an oscillatory movement performed by a top.
“Back in 1996, we had a model that more or less predicted what would happen. But now we clarifyValtonen told the BBC.
One of the important parameters that the updated model takes into account is the energy emitted by the system in the form of gravitational waves.
A very simplified theory of general relativity claims that gravity arises from the curvature of space-time. It is enough to imagine the universe as a tight tissue, the geometric shape of which varies depending on the mass of the celestial bodies that are located on it.
According to this premise, the orbits of some objects over others do not repeat their trajectory, formulated by gravity, determined by physicist Isaac Newton, but they follow the movement of the precession, which means that the trajectory changes with each rotation.
Under supermassive conditions OJ 287 waves have a significant impact on the operation of the system.
NASASpitzer was the only telescope that could capture the exact moment of impact.
Successful observation
The big test for this latest model took place on July 31 last year, when has been identified Last occurrence within 2.5 hours provided by equations.
The event was recorded by an infrared telescope. Spitzer, from the American space agency NASA.
This was a good observation, since it turned out that at that time OJ 287 was on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth and, therefore, was out of sight of terrestrial objects.
On the other hand, Spitzer’s distance from Earth (160 million km) put him in a privileged position.
“When I first checked the visibility of OJ 287, I was surprised to find that Spitzer caught him on the very day that the first glow was predicted,” said Seppo Lane, a scientist at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA. .UU., Who oversees Spitzer’s observations.
“Fortunately, we managed to capture the peak of this strike with Spitzer, because no other artificial tool was able to accomplish this feat in specific moment. “
Hairless theorem
BBC Famous professor Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018, developed a “hairless” black hole theorem.
Another detail that the model took into account is the physical characteristics of the largest black hole. It is his rotation.
Several scientists, including the late Stephen Hawking, developed what became known as “Hairless” black hole theorem.
In essence, this means that the surface, or “event horizon,” of a black hole along the axis of rotation is symmetrical: There are no lumps or bumps.
It is believed that observation OJ 287 is the best proof of the “hairless” theorem.
Professor Ahamvedu Gopakumar of the Tata Institute of Basic Research in India, together with graduate student Lankeswar Day, worked on a model of gravitational waves.
Teacher talked about his “Euphoria” when viewing, Spitzer data arrives. Now he is waiting to photograph the OJ 287 with the Event Horizon (EHT) telescope, which captured the first image of a black hole last year.
“With EHT, observations were made both in 2017 and in 2018. Other campaigns have been suspended (due to coronavirus), and we hope that we will have time during the 2021 campaign, ”he told the BBC.
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