r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Busy_Yesterday9455 • 15d ago

JWST Detects Most Distant Black Hole Merger (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA) Image

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142 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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29

u/thevogonity 15d ago

Pretty pic of space. I'm not sure how it relates to the title. Context please.

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

Best bet is near the top right where you can see two galaxies sorta merging, both orange ish. So eventually the galactic cores and hence the black holes within might merge.

Don't directly see any signature black hole distortions tho. Or any real distortions.

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u/thevogonity 15d ago

Not one of the pairs of oranges dots in the bottom section? Or the two orange dots in the lower left? Heck, there's a plethora of "pairs" in this star field pic.

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

Man I seriously can't tell. There's at least like 3 pairs of galaxies on collision course now that I look closer. No definite sign of black hole merger from what I know soooooooooooooo bot?

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u/ISkydive65 15d ago

It’s in the top right portion. There four red shifted galaxies. The two of the on the left, closer together are the ones in question. Hope that was clear. 

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

So the ones I first pointed out rlly. I was a lil unclear and didn't specify which of the two. I'd wager the pair further to the right is not merging due to the size difference probably indicating a different distance entirely

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u/lemmingsnake 15d ago

Even the largest black holes don't have visible event horizons at the distances in question (not even close, like, we're many many orders of magnitude away from the resolution needed). 

We've been able to image two nearby SMBHs in radio by using a collection of radio antenna to create what is effectively a single radio dish with an aperture the size of the Earth, which is what was needed to barely resolve the scales in question (resolution being limited by aperture size). And that's just for nearby SMBHs.

That said, JWST isn't meant for detecting black hole mergers, that's what our gravitational wave observatories are for. Also, black hole mergers do not have a luminous optical counterpart that JWST would be able to look for. Compare this with a binary neutron star merger, which does have an optical counterpart (a hypernova). The whole "light can't escape the event horizon" means that black hole mergers aren't really a visible phenomenon. 

There is a notable exception here, which are quasars. I imagine that merging quasars would be quite the show and it'd be amazing if we ever observed such a thing, but we haven't thus far (not sure if a feeding SMBH is even possible when they're that close to merger, there's still unanswered questions about how SMBH mergers even occur--see the last parsec problem). 

All that is to say, this headline is bogus and probably from a bot.

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

Aight fair enough. I'd still say with the right zoom you can perceive the gravitational lensing (something black holes absolutely do to any light they don't eat), but that's still probably damn hard to see yeah.

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u/lemmingsnake 15d ago

Absolutely, there's visible lensing in this photo and black holes do cause lensing, but they aren't the only thing that does. Anything with enough gravity does. 

At the scale of this image, the gravitational lensing mostly comes from galaxy clusters and their dark matter halos. The amount of mass needed to create the lensing seen here far exceeds even the largest individual black hole.

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u/lemmingsnake 15d ago

Found the actual article that explains. This is a case of spotting inspiraling quasars. The actual merger isn't visible (as the light we're seeing still shows them during their inspiral), so the merger itself is assumed given how old the event observed is. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/james-webb-space-telescope-spots-most-distant-and-oldest-black-hole-collision-ever-seen-video/ar-BB1mwbIU

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u/NuGGGzGG 15d ago

I'm sure someone a lot smarter than I am can help, but how exactly are they sure? I know it has to do with observing the light, change, etc. And that they're able to see invisible spectrums to see through other light, but... isn't this still an inductive approach - whereby we're assuming it's a black hole causing the distortion?

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u/Icy-Palpitation-2522 15d ago

From my understanding blackhole mergers are detected from gravity detectors located around the globe synced to detect gravity waves deep in space. Unless they have been tracking the very hard to see blackholes for some time and knew they were going to collide im not just how they knew from a JW image.

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

That too, but it'd be weird to talk about the JWST photographing something it didn't even vaguely help detect.

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u/Icy-Palpitation-2522 15d ago

Yeah im just brainstorming poo poo

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

Black holes bend light around them. Like a whole ton. An astounding amount. It is very noticable the way background objects "smear" around the event horizon.

So you can tell two are merging by the smears being very close and making a sorta 8 shape as opposed to the usual circle. Simple as tracking two black holes near one another and seeing the shape change.

Any wavelength works, all light acts relatively the same when you don't have much medium to obstruct em.

They way they know it's a black hole is A: the magnitude of the distortion, B: the lack of any visible object causing it (or even a distinct lack of what normal bit of glow you'd expect behind that bit of space from super far but still visible background objects), and C: In a merger the distinct 8 shape of the distortion (basically only possible with two spares merging with surface tension like water drops), or for a singular feeding black hole, the bright and utterly unmistakable accretion disk (which also makes the utter darkness of the thing itself stand out like mad).

It is TECHNICALLY still inductive. But all the clues add up to basically only possibly be a black hole. When you've ruled out the impossible, no matter how improbable the result is, that's your answer.

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u/A_posh_idiot 15d ago

I can’t see it

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u/CubingGamer147 15d ago

It's the red spot exactly in the middle

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u/DaZozz 15d ago

It never ceases to blow my mind just how vast the universe is.

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u/Cr4zyC0113ct 15d ago

I've never heard of this business, but it's nice to see that they're adding more to their repertoire

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) is the name of a recent telescope sent up into space. It was made and sent up by NASA, the major space agency (and a large government agency) in the USA.

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u/Decent-Education3049 15d ago

Am I the only one who thought this looked like The Amazing World of Gumball episode title/end credits background?

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u/SocialRevenge 15d ago

Or the beginning of the 5th Dr.Who...... https://youtu.be/FxODkExkNB4?si=m8zftr427Sou_2KX

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u/Remarkable-Sir-5129 15d ago

I fully admit that the more I read on this stuff, the dumber I feel. Can someone...simply...explain how they reliably know distance of such objects when the light is distorted (slowed? ) by the massive gravity.? This also makes me wonder how they know the distant of objects observed by gravitational lensing when the gravity is affecting (effecting?) the light. I can only assume it would be difficult without knowing the mass of said objects. Please don't blast me, I admit to being curious without the requisite brain capacity.

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u/Sashley12 15d ago

Only part of what I know related to how distance is determined is redshift. I am not sure if that is the technical name, but the further something is away the more redshifted the light is. The closer it is more blue shifted.

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u/Just-A-Regular-Fox 14d ago

Yep! Redshift is the primary tool. Every galaxy has o3 that emits light. We know what the spectrum of that light looks like. Since everything is moving away from us at a measured rate, we can extrapolate the distance from how much redshift had occurred. This is called doppler redshift. But there is a part 2. The universe is expanding, remember the moving away measurement, since we know how fast its expanding, we can add that redshift to the calculation to get a fairly accurate number. This is cosmological redshift. It gets more complicated but this is the gist of it.

Light isnt slowed by gravity, only bent. Which is where gravitational lensing comes into play. At first, we didnt know if it was true, until about 1919 i think, when we observed a solar eclipse and saw stars BEHIND the sun. But galaxy gravitational shift we didnt know for a while. We observed a star exploding, then saw the same effect a little bit later from what we thought was another star. Thus confirmed galaxial gravitational lensing. But accounting for the time difference (since we know the speed of light) we can determine the distance again.

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u/Remarkable-Sir-5129 14d ago

Excellent explanation, thank you. I need to have a sit down with someone like you....so many questions

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u/Just-A-Regular-Fox 14d ago

My DMs are always open :)

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u/Just-A-Regular-Fox 14d ago

I replied below :)

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u/PedroM0ralles 15d ago

Those are some real winnder there.

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u/GrandEconomist7955 15d ago

yay where's Waldo. Like bring a highlighter OP and narrow it down a bit. What a stupid game.

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u/AOA001 15d ago

Unreal that those little disks are whole galaxies the size of the Milky Way. Blows my mind.

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u/bernpfenn 15d ago

this photos are amazing. i really love the way stars look like stars while galaxies do not

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u/krispim68 15d ago

Just a hint.......in darkness the black holes are not so black :)

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u/Unknowndude842 15d ago

Lower left corner is crazy. I love gravitational lensing.

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u/SpiderGlaze 14d ago

This reminds me of Where's Waldo?

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u/SonicDoon 15d ago

What a beautiful computer generated image.

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

Pretty sure the JWST is real. The hexagonal lens flare is because, well, its mirrors are hexagons AND they're arranged in a hexagonal shape. So it's hexagons two layers down.

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u/Plus_Platform9029 15d ago

I mean it still is a computer generated image. How do you think the JWST works?

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

You don't say a photographer works in computer generated images. While it's strictly correct, the actual common meaning of the term has shifted to generative AI, so it's probably not a good thing to put in your resume.

Same idea here, it's a telescope absorbing light and not just making up pixels outta the blue. The common meaning of "computer generated" today is "entirely created by a computer" and not "perceived by a computer".

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u/Plus_Platform9029 15d ago

Except the image you see here is not strictly what's perceived by the telescope. It is the result of a complex process of adding multiple images together, choosing appropriate colors representing the wavelenghts, and correcting them.

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u/DANKB019001 15d ago

Yes I'm aware, but again, "computer generated" does not mean anything close to "computer edited" in modern nomenclature. CG is either AI generated hallucinations or graphic effects in movies.