Colossal Cosmic Collision Coming This Year At Galactic Center Say Awestruck Astronomers

So-called super massive black holes are the largest type of black holes. Their mass equals hundreds of thousands to a billion times the mass of our sun. The centre of all galaxies is thought to contain super massive black holes. But their origin is not fully understood and astrophysicists can only speculate as to what happens inside them. Hence the imminent collision is of great interest to scientists as it should provide some new insights.

Reinhard Genzel leads the team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory which has discovered the gas cloud about to collide with the black hole at the heart of our galaxy and studied its trajectory. According to their observations, its speed has nearly doubled in the last seven years, reaching more than 8 million km/h.

The cloud’s edges have already started to shred and it is expected to break up completely over the coming months. As we near the collision, the cloud is expected to get much hotter. It will also probably start to emit X-rays as a result of the interaction with the black hole. This event will provide astronomers and astrophysicists a unique opportunity to observe how a gas cloud behaves so close to one of the most mysterious objects in our universe.

A monitoring program to novae in our neighboring galaxy Andromeda led to the discovery of an extremely bright X-ray source, J004243.6 XMMU 412,519. Subsequent observations in the radio region indicate the existence of a high-energy particle beam, which is driven by the massive central object. This again is an indication that this source indeed contains a stellar black hole, the matter with a very high rate of stretches, which is close to the theoretical maximum. Through the observations and analysis of both the radiation from the accretion disk and the matter in the particle beam, astronomers can learn more about the processes around a stellar black hole.

This animation shows the observations of bright X-ray source J004243.6 XMMU 412,519 in our neighboring galaxy Andromeda across six months. In this region there are a number of other floating objects, but only the ULX showed the extreme increase in brightness in X-rays and the radio signal of a jet of high-energy particles, which is ejected from the area surrounding the stellar black hole.

Black holes are invisible because their extreme gravity even light swallowed.However, if a black hole accretes matter from its surroundings, this material is heated and glows brightly in X-rays. In addition to the accretion disk around the black hole often form-energy particle beams, called jets, in which high-energy plasma leaves the system. These jets are also driven by the gravity of the black hole and emit a strong radio signal.Accretion disks and jets are thus two aspects of the same phenomenon, and by astronomers examine both simultaneously, they can take a close look at the physical processes that occur in the vicinity of a black hole.

An international team of astronomers from institutions in Germany, Britain and other countries have now analyzed a particularly interesting source: in January 2012, Wolfgang Pietsch discovered by Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is a very bright X-ray source (“ultraluminous X-ray source,” ULX) as part of an observing campaign of the Andromeda galaxy. This is only the second ULX in the Andromeda galaxy, and it was immediately flagged for follow-up observations in the radio band.