14 DAY TRIAL // A new investigation of a Russian doll-like galactic system has revealed new insight into the power of black holes. The study shows that these immensely-dense objects have more intense effects on their surrounding than experts first calculate.
Using a telescope belonging to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), researchers at the University of Strasbourg in France identified a microquasar inside a strange galactic structure.
The formation is basically made up of a miniature, dwarf galaxy that is embedded in another, much larger one. Inside this system, the researchers managed to identify a small black hole, that has only the mass of an average star.
[ADMARK=]In spite of its small size, the object appears capable of releasing vast radio jets of elementary particles into space. The diminutive quasar is called S26, and it can be found inside the galaxy NGC 7793.
The formation lies some 13 million light-years away from Earth, in the direction of the Southern constellation of Sculptor, says the research team, which was led by astronomer Dr Manfred Pakull.
The expert and his team conducted several investigations of this corner of the Universe. This year, for example, they used two advanced telescopes to image the galaxy and its black hole in optical and X-ray wavelengths.
For the optical study, they used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in La Silla, Chile, which is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The X-ray investigation was conducted using the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory.
In the new research, they used the CSIRO Compact Array radio telescope near Narrabri, New South Wales, in Australia. The readings painted a portrait of S26 in which the black hole was the perfect analogue of much larger radio quasars.
Even if astronomers are hard-pressed today to find a radio galaxy or quasar, experts say that these structures actually dominated the Universe billions of years ago, when the first galaxies appeared.
“Measuring the power of black hole jets, and therefore their heating effect, is usually very difficult,” explains University College London professor and study coauthor Roberto Soria.
“With this unusual object, a bonsai radio quasar in our own backyard, we have a unique opportunity to study the energetics of the jets,” adds the expert, who was in charge of conducting the radio studies.
One of the main conclusions in the new research was that only about a tenth of the energy released by a black hole went into producing its radio emissions, which has significant implications for how these dark behemoths work.
“This suggests that in bigger galaxies too the jets are about a thousand times more powerful than we'd estimate from their radio glow alone,” says CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science expert Dr Tasso Tzioumis.
“That means that black hole jets can be both more powerful and more efficient than we thought, and that their heating effect on the galaxies they live in can be stronger,” he adds.
Details of the new research appear in the November 24 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature.