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posted by martyb on Friday February 05 2021, @11:39PM   Printer-friendly

Scintillating discovery: these distant 'baby' black holes seem to be misbehaving — and experts are perplexed:

Radio images of the sky have revealed hundreds of "baby" and supermassive black holes in distant galaxies, with the galaxies' light bouncing around in unexpected ways.

[...] Astronomers have long questioned why some radio galaxies host enormous lobes, while others remain small and confined. Two theories exist. One is that the jets are held back by dense material around the black hole, often referred to as frustrated lobes.

[...] The second theory to explain smaller lobes is the jets are young and have not yet extended to great distances.

[...] From the data, baby radio galaxies appear blue, which means they're brighter at higher radio frequencies. Meanwhile the old and dying radio galaxies appear red and are brighter in the lower radio frequencies.

We identified 554 baby radio galaxies. When we looked at identical data taken a year later, we were surprised to see 123 of these were bouncing around in their brightness, appearing to flicker. This left us with a puzzle.

Something more than one light year in size can't vary so much in brightness over less than one year without breaking the laws of physics. So, either our galaxies were far smaller than expected, or something else was happening.

[...] For our research, we surveyed more than 21,000 galaxies over one year across multiple radio frequencies. This makes it the first "spectral variability" survey, enabling us to see how galaxies change brightness at different frequencies.

Some of our bouncing baby radio galaxies changed so much over the year we doubt they are babies at all. There's a chance these compact radio galaxies are actually angsty teens rapidly growing into adults much faster than we expected.

While most of our variable galaxies increased or decreased in brightness by roughly the same amount across all radio colours, some didn't. Also, 51 galaxies changed in both brightness and colour, which may be a clue as to what causes the variability.

[...] This is the first time we've had the technological ability to conduct a large-scale variability survey over multiple radio colours. The results suggest our understanding of the radio sky is lacking and perhaps radio galaxies are more dynamic than we expected.

As the next generation of telescopes come online, in particular the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), astronomers will build up a dynamic picture of the sky over many years.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2021, @11:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2021, @11:53PM (#1109452)
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2021, @11:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2021, @11:56PM (#1109453)

    Are those black holes gaping or something?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @12:01AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @12:01AM (#1109455)

    Why do I have this annoying kid song stuck in my head?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @12:23AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @12:23AM (#1109461)

      Your alfoil hat is failing.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @03:14AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 06 2021, @03:14AM (#1109495)

        B-A-B-Y- - - - Galaxy, Baby Galaxy, Galaxy, Galaxy . . .

    • (Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Saturday February 06 2021, @05:04AM

      by jimtheowl (5929) on Saturday February 06 2021, @05:04AM (#1109525)
      All ACs suffer from this condition. There is no cure.
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