I woke up today with the strange thought - tried to
imagine what it would be like when a black hole is swallowed up by another
larger monster.
Now I knew a few things about Quasars so looking for
an orbiting black hole system would point me closer to black holes potentially
coming into each other’s deadly embrace. And quasar OJ-287 doesn’t disappoint.
This is a monster lurking some 3.5 Billion light years away.
In fact OJ-287 contains the largest black hole
detected in the universe to date. OJ-287 has produced quasi-periodic
optical outbursts going back approximately 120 years, as first apparent on
photographic plates from 1891.
Its central
supermassive black hole is among the largest known, with a mass of 18 billion
solar masses. As this system tears each other apart the resultant black hole
will be unimaginably massive not to mention its ability to bend space-time.
Object information
Speaking of space-time, this system provided further evidence
for general
relativity.
The theory predicts that the smaller hole's orbit itself should
rotate, or precess, over time, so that the point at which it comes nearest its
neighbor moves around in space - an effect seen in Mercury's orbit around the
Sun, albeit on a smaller scale.
Sequence information below.
