Using simulations to measure how radiation from one galaxy influenced
black hole formation in the other, the researchers found that the neighboring galaxy could be smaller and closer than previously estimated.
Yet conventional theories
of black hole formation and growth suggest that a black hole big enough to power these quasars could not have formed in less than a billion years.
It's a big deal to find the direct effects of gravity waves from 13 billion years ago, especially since efforts to find them from more recent sources —
like black hole formation after supernova explosions — haven't succeeded.
Besides revealing a mystery
about black hole formation, the new discovery sheds more light (so to speak) on when the first stars formed in the universe.
The dependence of one galaxy on another
for black hole formation is very surprising, says Greg Bryan, a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and leader of the galaxy formation group at CCA.
The process
of black hole formation was first described in 1939 in a paper in Physical Review, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.
If confirmed, the idea could cause a radical rethinking of theories about stellar evolution and
black hole formation in the young cosmos.
The process of
black hole formation was first described by J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder in the same issue of the Physical Review as Bohr and Wheeler's fission paper.
As such, while some theorists have speculated our future descendants could transfer information to new «baby» universes via wormholes or
black hole formation, it appears inevitable that after some point, intelligence in our own universe will simply be impossible.
In studying later cosmic epochs, at least 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, TMT will be able to dissect galaxies during the peak epoch of galaxy and
black hole formation.
«There are two main theories of
black hole formation,» says Gebhardt.
Dubbed Fast Radio Bursts, these radio signals can be caused by different events, from star explosions to
black hole formations, as per Huffington Post.
His main current research interests are high energy astrophysics, especially gamma ray bursts, galactic nuclei,
black hole formation and radiative processes (including gravitational waves) and cosmic structure formation, especially the early generation of stars and galaxies that formed at high redshifts at the end of the cosmic «dark age».