64 found spinning in sync in one region
SCIENTISTS have been left baffled by the discovery black holes that have aligned in close proximity in a region of the distant universe which has led to some speculating that an advanced alien race is responsible.
A staggering 64 supermassive black holes have been spotted all pointing at the same direction and spinning in sync – with experts saying that there is less than 0.1 per cent chance of this happening.
Facts about the Black Knight satellite
A jackpot of previously unknown black holes across the universe has been discovered by the infrared eyes of a prolific NASA sky-mapping telescope.
The cosmic find comes from data collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey (WISE) telescope, which scanned the entire sky in infrared light from December 2009 to February 2011. The full catalog of observations by WISE during its mission was publicly released in March, and astronomers are still poring through this celestrial trove for discoveries.
It is the first time such a vast number of supermassive black holes have been spotted in the same region of the universe. They were all spewing radio jets from their centre.
In this handout from NASA/ESA, an artist’s concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole. NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) revealed millions of potential black holes in its survey of the sky in 2011. The WISE telescope, which ceased operation is February of 2011 after it ran out of coolant to keep its electronics cool, made the full sky image and was released to the public in March with hopes of astronomers making discoveries.
Professor Andrew Russ Taylor, lead author of the study published in Monthly Notices, said: “Since these black holes don’t know about each other, or have any way of exchanging information or influencing each other directly over such vast scales, this spin alignment must have occurred during the formation of the galaxies in the early universe.”
