Astronomers have finally discovered the presence of a second supermassive black hole in an active
What is known
OJ 287 is approximately 5billion light years from us. Despite the fact that scientists have been observing it for more than 130 years, traces of the second supermassive black hole have only just been discovered. The key reason is the huge distance to the galaxy from us and the small distance between the two holes, due to which the signals merge into one point.
The discovered black hole has a mass of about 150masses of the sun. It was difficult to detect, since the second largest black hole in the universe is located nearby. It is about 18 billion times more massive than the Sun.
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The activity of the smaller of the two supermassive blackholes were seen in the framework of observations in 2021-2022. Polish astronomers recorded a bright flash that lasted less than 24 hours. The simulations showed that the outburst was not the relativistic jet of a large black hole, but the moment when a less massive black hole passed through the accretion disk of a second black hole, resulting in a release of energy.
Scientists will continue to monitor the active galaxyOJ 287. It is expected that observations of the quasar will provide such data on the physics of the processes occurring there that cannot be reproduced in scientific laboratories on Earth.