Mary Watters
Black Holes Inch Ahead to Violent Cosmic Union
Bagli, Charles V., and Vivian Yee. "Robert Durst of HBO’s ‘The Jinx’ Says He ‘Killed Them All’." The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2015. Web. 21 Mar. 2015
For the past nine years the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey has been analyzing about 247,000 known quasars and recording data on their brightness. Quasars are incredibly massive celestial bodies fueled by black holes that emit an almost unfathomable amount of light and energy. For the brightness of such a massive and powerful body to be impacted even slightly, an incredible force of equal or greater magnitude must be acting on it. When astronomers discovered that the signal from the quasar within PG 1302-102, a remote galaxy, was wavering roughly fourteen percent about every five years, investigation into what could be so greatly impacting the quasar began. Using the light variation evidence from the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey and evidence from spectrographic observations astronomers have theorized that there are in fact a pair of supermassive black holes that are spiraling towards one other at a distance of less than a light year apart in the galaxy of PG 1302-102. Black holes are believed to be at the center of most galaxies and normally they are dormant. However, if they obtain energy from stars or gas they light up in the form of quasars. Dr. Matthew Graham, a computational scientist, analyzed the flicker of light within the quasar and wrote, “The most logical explanation is a pair of black holes circling each other.” Dr. Djorgovski, a fellow astronomer, agreed. “The only thing that could so significantly impact a giant black hole, would be another black hole” (Djorgovski p.3). The eventual merger of these two black holes should be a relatively common event in space, since galaxies are forever merging and colliding with one another. However, the closeness of the two speculated black holes gives scientists reason for concern. There are many instances in cosmic history of galaxies fusing, but in these instances the black holes have remained tens to thousands of light-years away from one another. We have never before detected black holes actually colliding with one another. The result of such a collision is speculated to release an amount of energy equal to 100 million supernova explosions. Supercomputer simulations of the merger are not feasible because of how far along the system is, so in order to study the path of collision (which is estimated to be millions of years away) astronomers must simply analyze gravitational wave detectors and wait for the eventual collision.
The galaxy containing the two black holes, PG 1302-102, appears in the constellation Virgo and is relatively bright. However, it is actually at an incredibly remote distance of 3.5 billion light years away from earth. The collision explosion of the two black holes would destroy the galaxy PG 1302 - 102, but most likely not affect earth or the Milky Way. Theories surrounding the actual result of such a collision infer that most of the energy would go into gravitational waves (“violent ripples of space-time predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity) and that the neighboring stars would be driven away “like shingles in a tornado” (Djorgovski p. 1). These theories and discoveries surrounding the eventual merger of the two black holes could potentially fuel the underdeveloped field of gravitational wave astronomy and provide us with information that would further our knowledge on what will happen when our galaxy eventually collides with it’s neighboring galaxy, Andromeda. Society could benefit immensely by understanding how to protect our Milky Way and other potentially life containing galaxies from dangerous galaxy mergers.
This article, written by the New York Times, was very balanced and provided a relatively clear, concise analysis of some very complex astronomical concepts. After reading the article I did need to do some extra research to augment my understanding of topics like gravitational waves though. Almost every concept or theory was identified and defined in the article, but every one was not explained. Being able to conceptualize the briefly outlined description of quasars, for instance, was very difficult. The article would probably appeal to a greater audience if it was able to portray some of it’s harder astronomical topics in clearer detail. The article was, nonetheless, very effective in maintaining my level of intrigue. Since it was so interesting to read I chose to do the extra research to understand it instead of picking a less challenging article.
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ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of Mary’s current event, she did a good job explaining to the reader what a “quasar” is, considering I have never heard of it before. Giving this type of background information sets up the whole current event, because if you don’t know what a quasar is, then you have no idea what the whole current event is about. I also admire the fact that she related things that are harder for the average reader to understand, to more fathomable measurements. For example, she said that the result of a collision between two black wholes would most likely release the same amount of energy as 100 million supernova explosions. I could never imagine what two black holes colliding would look like, because have not done any research on the topic, so it is helpful to have that comparison. The third thing that I found Mary presented really well, was her explanation of this collision most likely not affecting Earth or the Milky Way. This is important to include, because the whole time I was reading the current event I was wondering and worrying if this would affect our solar system. Then she goes on to explain how this could actually benefit our society by helping us understand how to protect our galaxy.
ReplyDeleteI am very impressed by the sophisticated understanding it seems like Mary has gained on this topic. To me it seems like she not only read the article and just wrote something up about it, she truly took the time to fully understand what she was analyzing so that she could give us the best analysis. One thing I learned is that if two black holes collided, the energy released would be equal to 100 million supernova explosions. Another thing I learned is that the galaxy containing these two black holes is 3.5 billion light years away and it would most likely not affect Earth or the Milky Way.
One thing I would suggest to make this review a little better would be to explain some of the terms that the common reader wouldn’t understand, such as, a “spectrographic observation” or what the “Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey” is since most people don’t have that knowledge. Other then that one thing I think that this was a very informative current event and I learned a lot from it.