A team of Astronomers have discovered in curious figures from the universe. These are two galaxies that are distant in each other with each other to form a big edition. From the point of view of the earth, the junction of the discs resembles the number eight lying down, similar to the symbol of infinity (∞).
Due to this resemblance, researchers – who are based at the University of Yale and Copenhagen – nicknamed it the “Infinite Galaxy” and have detailed their discovery in an article published in the Astrophysical newspaper letters. Beyond its evocative form, the structure intrigues scientists because of its content: inside, it could be the first direct proof of a newly supermassive hole newly.
The images were taken through the James Webb space telescope then erected with information from Chandra X -ray observatoryThe most powerful X -ray telescope ever created. The light of this galaxy comes from an era when the universe was only 470 million years old – in just over 13.5 billion years in August.
The scientist thinks they could have seen the signs of a black hole direct. As a general rule, black holes are intended for the forms where the stars lack fuel and collapse under their own gravity, but there is a phenomenon of alternative formation debated in astrophysics – where a black hole forms via the collapse of the gigantic cloud of gas, without a star to have forms. Such a possibility has been theorized, but this type of black hole has not yet been observed.
The biggest black holes found in the universe, supermassive black holes have been identified in galaxies that only formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. But what has made their training possible is not yet fully understood. Many supermassive black holes are supposed to have the resolution of the black holes to Lonterler. But with very old supermassive black holes, there does not seem to have been time for the first stars of the universe to evolve, collapse black holes of whole stellar mass, then merge towards a colossal and lateral supermasse.
Some astronomers therefore proposed an alternative origin for the first supermassive black holes in the universe. According to this hypothesis, black holes would not need to form from a star or to come from mergers. Instead, the theory goes, a dense touch of matter which, in other cases, gave birth to galaxies, the neck has compressed itself directly in massive black holes. Scientists are currently studying this scenario, concluding that evidence in this way has occurred.
The Infinity Galaxy may offer revealing indices on the possibility of this second training path. “During the collision, the gas within these two shock and compressed galaxies. This compression could be sufficient to form a knot of shape, which then collides in a black hole”, Pieter Van Dokkum, teacher of astronomy and physics at Yale and a co -author on the papersaid in a post on his University website. “Although such collisions are rare events, similar extreme gas densities would have been quite common in the first cosmic eras, when the galaxies began to form,” helped Van Dokkum.
Scientists are also considered to be other less spectacular alternatives as to what is happening in the infinite galaxy. Rather than being created through a direct bonding of petrol, this powerful additional black hole – the green place in the image above – it is rather the signs of a black hole ejected from another galaxy when “infinity” passes it. Another possible scenario is that this image actually shows the collision of three galaxies, with the third overshadowed by the other larger ones.
For the moment, the team claims that the preliminary results are exciting. “We cannot say definitive that we have found a black hole direct collapse. But we can say that these new data reinforce the case that we see a newborn black hole, while deleting some of the competing explanations,” concluded Van Dokkum in a blog For NASA.
This story initially looked at Cable EN ESPAñol and was translated from Spanish.
