Astronomers have predicted that two supermassive black holes will soon merge. A preprint of an article about this has been published in the arXiv repository.

If the researchers' conclusions are correct, the total mass of black holes exceeds hundreds of millions of solar ones, they are located at a distance of 1.2 billion light years from Earth in the active core of the galaxy, called SDSSJ1430 + 2303. If the merger occurs, it will be a unique event for world astronomy, since black hole mergers have never been observed, predicted in advance.

Scientists have concluded that they are observing a pair of supermassive black holes based on the analysis of fluctuations in the brightness of optical and X-ray radiation coming from the core of the galaxy. Often, periodic fluctuations in the brightness of astronomical objects are associated with their rotation around their own axis or around other bodies. In this case, the astronomers found that the oscillation cycle was accelerating, and they interpreted it as the approach of two bodies.

The merger will cause a flash of light as well as other electromagnetic radiation over a wide range of frequencies. In addition, astronomers expect powerful gravitational waves and a neutrino flux, which can tell scientists a lot about the processes inside atoms under such extreme conditions.

The prediction was made by Ning Jiang from the Science and Technology University of China and his colleagues. According to their calculations, the merger will occur within a period of one hundred to three hundred days, or, according to another method of analysis, up to three years. It is worth noting that their conclusion has not yet been confirmed by other researchers, but many astronomers have begun booking telescopes for observations to test the prediction. In addition, there may not be black holes in the discovered active galactic nucleus at all, since the nature of this type of galactic nuclei is not completely clear to scientists.

Previously, astronomers suspected that old stars could still give birth to planets.

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