Supermassive black-hole merger could solve astrophysics mystery

By Regina Jorgenson

(Feb. 17, 2022) The famous physicist Niels Bohr once said, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

Indeed, while the ability to predict the future behavior of physical systems is at the core of all of astrophysics, it’s no easy task. Making predictions for systems about which very little is understood, is even more difficult.

Recently, a group of astronomers published a prediction that a binary pair of supermassive black holes located in the center of a distant galaxy, will merge together in the next 100 to 300 days. If this prediction turns out to be true and we are able to observe the effects of this merger, it will represent a major breakthrough in the field of astrophysics. For the first time ever we will have observed direct evidence for the leading theory of how supermassive black holes form.

To step back briefly and set the stage, supermassive black holes are very massive black holes with masses of millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. This large mass and extreme density causes gravitational collapse, resulting in a region of space-time from which nothing, including light, can escape. Hence, the term black hole.