A mysterious structure at the center of Andromeda – the Andromeda Galaxy, our Milky Way’s neighboring galaxy, has just been decoded.
This is a peculiar star cluster located at the center of Andromeda, which has puzzled astronomers for many years. Typically, a galaxy’s center features a symmetrical star cluster, but Andromeda’s cluster is entirely distorted, as if something has struck it and caused it to deform.
According to Science Alert, a research team led by astrophysicist Tatsuya Akiba from the University of Colorado Boulder has concluded that this is a sign of the merger of two supermassive black holes, which were once the central black holes of the galaxy.
Andromeda Galaxy – (Photo: NASA)
To demonstrate this, the authors ran computer simulations of supermassive black hole collisions and found that the forces generated were sufficient to stretch the orbits of stars near the galaxy’s center into an elongated oval shape, similar to what is observed in the Andromeda Galaxy.
The reason Andromeda has two central black holes is that it once consumed another galaxy. When galaxies collide and merge, the two central black holes orbit each other, accelerating before crashing into one another in a catastrophic event, ultimately merging. Currently, Andromeda has only one black hole left, as the merger has completed, leaving behind the peculiar star cluster.
The black hole merger will not destroy the stars of the galaxy, but it generates an immense amount of energy sufficient to affect the positions of the stars.
This is an intriguing discovery since Andromeda is predicted to collide with our Milky Way in the next 2 billion years. This will be a fierce confrontation as both galaxies are massive, classified as “monsters” in the universe. A study from last year revealed that to achieve its colossal size today, the galaxy containing Earth has consumed about 16 other galaxies.
The collision between Andromeda and our galaxy is believed not to destroy Earth, but it could lead to extinction by creating enough force to displace the Solar System, pushing Earth out of the “habitable zone” it currently resides in.
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