How a scientist weighed black holes invisible to the naked eye
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How do we weigh the invisible?
Joseph Simon, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at Colorado University, Boulder, recently used computer simulations, or "models," to predict the masses of the largest supermassive black holes in the universe.
"The black hole at the center of our galaxy is millions of times the mass of the sun, but we also see others that we think are billions of times the mass of the sun," Simon explained in a press statement.
But what could the mass of the very heaviest black holes be?
Weighing the heaviest black holes
Simon's calculations add to the growing body of research suggesting that, billions of years ago, black holes were much larger than scientists once thought. The scientist's findings are detailed in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"We're starting to see from a variety of different sources that there have been pretty massive things in the universe since pretty early on," Simon said.
For his calculations, Simon gathered data related to hundreds of thousands of galaxies, some of which are billions of years old. The scientist used this to calculate the approximate mass of black holes in the largest galaxies in the universe.
Simon also used his calculations to simulate the gravitational wave background these galaxies might create. The gravitational wave background refers to the flow of gravitational waves rippling throughout the cosmos on a near-constant basis. These waves, also known as ripples in space-time, are predominantly created during black hole mergers.
Surprisingly, his calculations suggested that there were much larger galaxies in the universe billions of years ago than previously believed. "There’s been the expectation that you would only see these really massive systems in the nearby universe," Simon said. "It takes time for black holes to grow."
Searching for the largest supermassive black holes
The scientist now aims to peer even further back in time. "Understanding the masses of black holes is critical to some of these foundational questions like the gravitational wave background, but also how galaxies grow and how our universe has evolved," he explained.
To fully understand the gravitational wave background, scientists need to know how massive the universe's supermassive black holes can really be. As Simon put it, bigger cymbals make a bigger bang and produce much larger gravitational waves.
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