Sagittarius A-Star, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, has some strange properties. Is it the result of a BH merger?
This is the first image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Scientists are working hard to figure out how old it is and how it grew so massive. Image Credit: EHT
SMBHs are the Universe’s most beguiling objects. They’re so massive that their gravitational pull can trap light. They’re surrounded by a rotating ring of material called an accretion disk that feeds material into the hole. When they’re actively feeding, they’re called active galactic nuclei The most luminous AGNs are called quasars, and they can outshine entire galaxies.
This artist’s conception illustrates a supermassive black hole at the core of a young, star-rich galaxy. Black holes grow through two processes: accretion and mergers. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The pair of researchers used computer simulations to model what impact a merger would have on the Milky Way’s black hole. “Through investigating various SMBH growth models, here we show that the inferred spin properties of Sgr A* provide evidence of a past SMBH merger,” the authors write.
“This merger likely occurred around 9 billion years ago, following the Milky Way’s merger with the Gaia-Enceladus galaxy,” said Zhang, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at UNLV and the founding director of the Nevada Centre for Astrophysics. “This event not only provides evidence of theGaia-Enceladus in a simulation of a galactic merger with the Milky Way matching Gaia data. The remnants of the merger are found throughout the Milky Way.
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