New calculations reveal that the previously overlooked behavior of dark matter particles could cause a pair of supermassive black holes to merge into a larger one, proposing a solution to the long-standing “last parsec problem.”
Evidence for a gravitational wave background thought to result from the merger of supermassive black holes is accumulating from observations of pulsar timing arrays. An open question is how the supermassive black holes get through the “final parsec” separation before gravitational wave radiation alone can cause the binary to merge. Alonso-Alvarez othersThey argue that dynamical friction…acists operating the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
In 2023, astrophysicists announced they had detected a “hum” of gravitational waves permeating the universe.
They hypothesize that this background signal comes from millions of merging pairs of supermassive black holes, each with a mass billions of times that of the Sun.
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“This article is a version of a press release provided by the University of Toronto.”
Source: www.sci.news
