2024-07-05 06:00:07
Supermassive black holes may hold secrets regarding their ancestors. A new study proposes a novel approach to unraveling these mysteries. While stellar black holes are born from the collapse of large stars, supermassive black holes owe their existence to gigantism to much more complex processes.
Astronomers believe that the growth of these colossi occurs not only through the absorption of gas and stars, but also through a series of mergers of increasingly massive black holes. Imre Bartos and Oscar Barrera, in a study published in Astroparticle Physicsexplore how black holes “sons” resulting of these mergers can carry information regarding the “parent” black holes.
Bartos’ results show that black holes born from collisions retain crucial information regarding the properties of their ancestors, such as mass and spin. The latter, also called angular momentummight even reveal the story of their formation and growth.
Black holes, described by physicist John Wheeler as lacking any superficial characteristics, can nevertheless reveal clues regarding their passé through their spin. A black hole having acquired a vitesse high rotation might thus have grown by absorbing gas or via previous collisions.
To conduct their study, Bartos and Barrera applied an advanced statistical technique called Bayesian inference. This method is particularly suitable in the context current, where physicists exploit the waves gravitational to analyze black hole mergers. Indeed, Bayesian inference allows to combine the data observed with pre-existing knowledge to estimate the properties of ancestral black holes. This approach thus improves the precision of the conclusions drawn from the gravitational waves detected during the events of fusion.
Recent observations suggest that black hole “production lines,” where multiple successive mergers occur, may be common in the Universe. Bartos welcomes this cosmic investigation, comparing the hunt for traces left by previous generations of black holes to a real police investigation.
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