B3 1715+425
B3 1715+425 is an astronomical radio source which is theorized to be a nearly naked black hole.[1]
Discovery
[edit]B3 1715+425 was discovered during a systematic search for supermassive black holes (SMBH) by James Condon and his team at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in 2016.[2] Condon recalls how his team had been looking for “orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes, with one offset from the centre of a galaxy, as telltale evidence of a previous galaxy merger.” Instead, they found B3 1715+425.[1]
Description
[edit]It is speculated that B3 1715+425 was originally enclosed by a host galaxy, like most other SMBHs.[3] Models predict that in most black hole collisions, the two objects will combine to form a larger black hole.[4][5] However, in B3 1715+425‘s case, Condon speculates that a collision with a much larger galaxy resulted in most of the host galaxy for B3 1715+425 being pulled away, leaving it with a small remaining galaxy of diameter just 3,000 lightyears across (in comparison, the Milky Way Galaxy is 87,400 light years across).[1][2] The galaxy responsible for removing most B3 1715+425's stars is an elliptical brightest cluster galaxy at the center of the ZwCl 8193 cluster.[1] The galaxy shows a distorted morphology and a starburst, probably as a result of the interaction with B3 1715+425.[1]
Resources
[edit]- ^ a b c d e MacDonald, Fiona (2016-11-04). "A Naked Black Hole Is on The Loose And Howling Through The Universe". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 2022-12-21.
- ^ a b Condon, J. J.; Darling, Jeremy; Kovalev, Y. Y.; Petrov, L. (12 January 2017). "A Nearly Naked Supermassive Black Hole". The Astrophysical Journal. 834 (2): 184. arXiv:1606.04067. Bibcode:2017ApJ...834..184C. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/834/2/184. S2CID 59375294.
- ^ thebeaconbeat (2021-04-11). "The Roaming Black Hole". The Beacon Beat. Retrieved 2022-12-21.
- ^ "Black hole collisions could help us measure how fast the universe is expanding | University of Chicago News". news.uchicago.edu. 15 August 2022. Retrieved 2022-12-21.
- ^ "Two black holes merged despite being born far apart in space". 2022-08-02. Retrieved 2022-12-21.