5 ms·

Supermassive black holes found spiraling in at seven percent light speed

71 points by Rifu 11y ago

jonstokes 11y ago
"The Final Parsec Problem" -- not to be confused with the Last Mile Problem :p
- richmarr 11y ago
  I don't know; there are comparisons you could draw between a telecoms company and a supermassive black hole.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
scott_s 11y ago
Recent HN thread on a NY Times article talking about the same work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233874 That thread also contains an excellent description of the last parsec problem by HN poster antognini.
amelius 11y ago
> Supermassive black holes are expected to come in pairs pretty often. That’s because every galaxy has its own supermassive black hole, and galaxies often merge, bringing the two together. Okay, but following this reasoning, we should also see triples and quadruples, I would say.
- teraflop 11y ago
  A two-body system is gravitationally stable, and three or more are not (long-term, in general).
  - blankhole 11y ago
    There are plenty of long-term stable three-body systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system Only 3-body systems nicknamed "Trapezia" systems are unstable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system#Trapezia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system#Trapezia Regarding the article itself: it's a nice simulation, probably correct, but the data barely supports the theory. Data is so noisy (and from different instruments) - they didn't even bother showing a periodicity spectrum. Feynman would call this bad science: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7569/full/nature15262.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7569/full/nature1...
  - GregBuchholz 11y ago
    Veering off topic a bit, but you might be interested in planar n-body coreographies. Not that they exist in nature, but... http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~jm/Choreographies/ http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~jm/Choreographies/
- antognini 11y ago
  This is true! This reasoning was explored in an excellent paper by Blaes et al. in 2002 [1]. (Incidentally, one of the authors on this paper has the wonderful name Aristotle Socrates.) Due to a very interesting dynamical phenomenon called the Kozai-Lidov mechanism, if the orbit of the third body is at high inclination relative to the inner two, it can drive the inner orbit to very high eccentricities and cause them to merge much more quickly. So even though you would form triples fairly frequently, the third body would cause the other to rapidly merge, so you would typically expect only to see binaries. On a more shameless note, I also explored this in one of my first papers [2]. [1]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002ApJ...578..775B http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002ApJ...578..775B [2]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014MNRAS.439.1079A http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014MNRAS.439.1079A
Balgair 11y ago
Hmm, I wonder what it would be like to fall into a black hole rotating at light speed then? In addition to the spaghetti effect, would it be a whorled spaghetti effect? What would it be like to fall in from the top versus the equator or another latitude? I wonder what the singularity at the center would be like besides just a hoop. Can you make the singular hoop (english sure is strange here) process if there is another large black hole nearby? Man, I need more or less coffee, I can't tell which though.
- samstave 11y ago
  Well, I have one theory -- but it hangs by a string at best...
jostmey 11y ago
What would happen mathematically if two singularities orbiting each other merged? Would it become one singularity or some super nasty complex mathematical system?
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  One singularity. (At least, that's the current theory. Experimental verification is not in hand at the moment.)
- scott_s 11y ago
  See some reddit posts I pointed to in a previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10236561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10236561
ck2 11y ago
Don't really "weird" things start to happen when physical matter hits 10% speed of light?

71 points by Rifu 11y ago

jonstokes 11y ago

"The Final Parsec Problem" -- not to be confused with the Last Mile Problem :p

richmarr 11y ago
I don't know; there are comparisons you could draw between a telecoms company and a supermassive black hole.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

scott_s 11y ago

Recent HN thread on a NY Times article talking about the same work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233874 That thread also contains an excellent description of the last parsec problem by HN poster antognini.

amelius 11y ago

> Supermassive black holes are expected to come in pairs pretty often. That’s because every galaxy has its own supermassive black hole, and galaxies often merge, bringing the two together. Okay, but following this reasoning, we should also see triples and quadruples, I would say.

teraflop 11y ago
A two-body system is gravitationally stable, and three or more are not (long-term, in general).
- blankhole 11y ago
  There are plenty of long-term stable three-body systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system Only 3-body systems nicknamed "Trapezia" systems are unstable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system#Trapezia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_star_system#Trapezia Regarding the article itself: it's a nice simulation, probably correct, but the data barely supports the theory. Data is so noisy (and from different instruments) - they didn't even bother showing a periodicity spectrum. Feynman would call this bad science: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7569/full/nature15262.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7569/full/nature1...
- GregBuchholz 11y ago
  Veering off topic a bit, but you might be interested in planar n-body coreographies. Not that they exist in nature, but... http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~jm/Choreographies/ http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~jm/Choreographies/
antognini 11y ago
This is true! This reasoning was explored in an excellent paper by Blaes et al. in 2002 [1]. (Incidentally, one of the authors on this paper has the wonderful name Aristotle Socrates.) Due to a very interesting dynamical phenomenon called the Kozai-Lidov mechanism, if the orbit of the third body is at high inclination relative to the inner two, it can drive the inner orbit to very high eccentricities and cause them to merge much more quickly. So even though you would form triples fairly frequently, the third body would cause the other to rapidly merge, so you would typically expect only to see binaries. On a more shameless note, I also explored this in one of my first papers [2]. [1]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002ApJ...578..775B http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002ApJ...578..775B [2]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014MNRAS.439.1079A http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014MNRAS.439.1079A

Balgair 11y ago

Hmm, I wonder what it would be like to fall into a black hole rotating at light speed then? In addition to the spaghetti effect, would it be a whorled spaghetti effect? What would it be like to fall in from the top versus the equator or another latitude? I wonder what the singularity at the center would be like besides just a hoop. Can you make the singular hoop (english sure is strange here) process if there is another large black hole nearby? Man, I need more or less coffee, I can't tell which though.

samstave 11y ago
Well, I have one theory -- but it hangs by a string at best...

jostmey 11y ago

What would happen mathematically if two singularities orbiting each other merged? Would it become one singularity or some super nasty complex mathematical system?

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
One singularity. (At least, that's the current theory. Experimental verification is not in hand at the moment.)
scott_s 11y ago
See some reddit posts I pointed to in a previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10236561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10236561

ck2 11y ago

Don't really "weird" things start to happen when physical matter hits 10% speed of light?