Two Black Holes Form from One Dying Star: The Origins of Supermassive Black Holes (Video)

First Posted: Nov 07, 2013 08:39 AM EST
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Black holes are massive objects in space that possess gravitational forces that are so strong that not even light can escape them. These black holes are usually formed during the deaths of stars and can come in various sizes--from the regular to the supermassive. Now, scientists have discovered how supermassive black holes may have formed in the early universe, revealing that one collapsed star may spawn two black holes that could potentially fuse together.

How supermassive black holes formed in the early universe has long puzzled scientists. Over billions of years, small black holes can slowly grow into the supermassive variety by taking on mass from their surroundings. Yet this slow process fails to explain how the supermassive black holes in the early universe formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang. This new study, though, may offer an explanation.

In order to investigate the origins of young supermassive black holes, the researchers turned to a model involving supermassive stars. These giant stars are hypothesized to have existed for just a brief time in the early universe. Unlike ordinary stars, these supermassive stars are stabilized against gravity mostly by their own photon radiation. During its life, this type of star slowly cools due to energy loss through the emission of photon radiation. As it does, it becomes more compact and its central density slowly increases. Eventually, it begins to gravitationally collapse.

Previous studies predicted that when these stars collapse, they maintain a spherical shape that possibly becomes flattened due to rapid rotation. This shape is called an axisymmetric configuration. Incorporating the fact that rapidly spinning stars are prone to tiny perturbations, the researchers predicted that these perturbations could cause the stars to deviate into non-axisymmetric shapes during the collapse. This could cause the gas inside the dying star to clump and form high-density fragments.

So what does this mean? The fragments could orbit the center of the star and become increasingly dense. At sufficiently high temperatures, two orbiting fragments could become sufficiently dense that a black hole could form at each clump. This pair of black holes could then spiral around one another and eventually merge to become a supermassive black hole.

Currently, the findings are theoretical. However, future space-borne gravitational-wave observatories could confirm the research.

"The emitted gravitational-wave signal and its potential detection will inform researchers about the very formation process of the first supermassive black holes in the still very young universe, and may settle some--and raise new-i-mportant questions on the history of our universe," said Christian Ott, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Want to learn more? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.

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