Scientists have recently discovered the closest pair of the supermassive black hole, and the black holes are orbiting each other. The scientists discovered the object while examining some old X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the ground telescope, Gemini-North situated in Hawaii and the Caltech’s Palomar Transient Factory situated in California. The astronomers carried out a deep investigation while they were searing for X-ray binary stars.
The object has named as J0045+41. At first, the scientists thought that the object is a star and it is in the Andromeda Galaxy which is also known as M31. The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years away from earth, and it is the most closets galaxy to the earth.
Expressing more about the findings Trevor Dorn-Wallenstein of the University of Washington stated that “We were looking for a special type of star in M31 and thought we had found one.” He further said, “We were surprised and excited to find something far stranger!”
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However, now the new findings have given some more information about the J0045+41. As per the findings, the object is a pair of stars, and they orbit each other once after 76 days. The information, collected from Chandra informed that the signal of the X-ray is very powerful and it is not matching with the classification.
The Gemini North data has given more clues which somehow now cleared the distance of the object. As per the data, the object was 2.6 billion light years away from earth that means 1000 times farther away if compared with the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy.
“This is the first time such strong evidence has been found for a pair of orbiting giant black holes,” said co-author Emily Levesque of the University of Washington.
As per the findings, if combined the two black holes, the total mass is 200 million times of the Sun’s mass. Sagittarius A has a mass that 4 million times of the Sun’s mass. Now, the scientists have expected that the two black holes were at the center of a galaxy and then they gradually being pulled together by the gravity force that they have and at the end the collide. Till now the scientists have not detected the exact mass of the black holes. The research report has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.
