In a first, researchers have created simulations explaining how the largest of black hole mergers may have happened, showing one may have devoured another “in a ‘Pac-Man-like’ behaviour.” The researchers, including those from Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, said the disturbances in space from 10 black hole mergers have been detected so far as gravitational waves by observatories on the Earth, but the origins of these mergers still remain to be explained.
The largest black hole merger observed to date defied previous models since it had a higher spin and mass than the range thought possible, they said. The current study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, noted that such large mergers could happen just outside supermassive black holes at the centre of active galaxies.
According to the researchers, gas, stars, dust, and black holes may get caught in a region surrounding supermassive black holes known as an accretion disk.Read More..
