Two massive black holes swept clean the center of a galaxy ⚡ экспресс
At the center of a galaxy in the Abell402 cluster, astronomers found an unexpected void—like if everyone in a crowded square suddenly vanished. This 'hollow' is missing stars worth two billion Suns. Nearby, there might be a pair of supermassive black holes hiding; their dance could have swept the stars away, like a giant cosmic broom. What else might such voids hide?
Astronomers used the infrared telescope and the old Hubble to discover a gaping void in the center of a galaxy in the Abell 402 cluster—as if an invisible tugboat had pulled billions of stars out of there. The missing mass equals two billion suns: it's not a cloud but a real lack of stars. Near this hole, two powerful sources were found—candidates for supermassive black holes. They orbit at a distance of thousands of light-years and together weigh 60 billion suns—the heaviest pair ever observed. For comparison, the central black hole of the Milky Way is 15,000 times lighter.
The combined gravity of this pair acts like a giant space tugboat: the holes push and eject stars, leaving a swept-clean zone at the center of the galaxy. If the second black hole is confirmed, the system will become the most powerful source of ripples in space-time, which future sensitive detectors could pick up. The first ideas about such waves were developed by Kip Thorne. Remarkably, this pair ejected more stars than shine in some dwarf galaxies: it can accelerate a star to a speed high enough to hurl it forever into intergalactic space.
🎯 The discovered pair of black holes is heavier than all the stars in some small galaxies combined.
🎬 If in 'Interstellar' the hero dove into one black hole, here a pair of giants scooped out a starless abyss around themselves.