Academia Sinica researchers said they have calculated that a supermassive black hole in a galaxy 4 billion light-years away might contain more than 300 million times the Sun’s mass by analyzing images taken by radio telescopes, adding that the findings are key to understanding the formation and evolution of black holes and their host galaxies.
A team led by research fellows Kenneth Wong (黃活生), Sherry Suyu (蘇游瑄) and Satoki Matsushita on Monday said that it analyzed the high-resolution images of SDP.81, a galaxy located 4 billion light-years from Earth, taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile — the biggest radio telescope array in the world for observing radiation from the early universe, molecular gas and interstellar dust.
The images were taken during a chance alignment of the Earth, SDP.81 and another galaxy — all located in a straight line spanning 12 billion light-years, Wong said.
The images display what is known as the Einstein ring: the deformation of light from a source — in this case, the background galaxy 12 billion light-years away — into a ring due to gravitational lensing by an object with an extremely large mass — SDP.81, Wong said.
The gravity of the massive foreground galaxy deflects the light from the background galaxy and creates the ring structure, allowing the team to calculate the mass of a supermassive black hole, located near the center of SDP.81, by analyzing the brightness of the ring and of the central image within the ring, Wong said, adding that the Hubble Space Telescope is unable to capture such images as it only detects visible and infrared light.
“This is the highest resolution image of a gravitational lens that has ever been taken, and the amount of detail in this image is much greater than even space-based telescope observations,” he said.
Almost all massive galaxies seem to have supermassive black holes at their centers. Previously, scientists could only directly calculate the mass for galaxies immediately adjacent, Wong said.
“ALMA now gives us the sensitivity to look at the central image of the lens, which can allow us to determine the mass of much more distant black holes,” Wong said.
Measuring the masses of more distant black holes is critical to understanding their relationship with their host galaxies and how they grow over time, he added.
The research was published last month in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal periodical.
Next year the team plans to observe a gravitational lens located 6 billion light-years away.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday voiced dissatisfaction with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), whose latest meeting, concluded earlier the same day, appeared not to address the country’s application. In a statement, MOFA said the CPTPP commission had "once again failed to fairly process Taiwan’s application," attributing the inaction to the bloc’s "succumbing to political pressure," without elaborating. Taiwan submitted its CPTPP application under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" on Sept. 22, 2021 -- less than a week after China
ALIGNED THINKING: Taiwan and Japan have a mutual interest in trade, culture and engineering, and can work together for stability, Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and Japan are two like-minded countries willing to work together to form a “safety barrier” in the Indo-Pacific region, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said at the opening ceremony of the 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium in Taipei. Taiwan and Japan are close geographically and closer emotionally, he added. Citing the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) in September, Cho said the submersible water level sensors given by Japan during the disaster helped Taiwan monitor the lake’s water levels more accurately. Japan also provided a lot of vaccines early in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
A home-style restaurant opened by a Taiwanese woman in Quezon City in Metro Manila has been featured in the first-ever Michelin Guide honoring exceptional restaurants in the Philippines. The restaurant, Fong Wei Wu (豐味屋), was one of 74 eateries to receive a “Michelin Selected” honor in the guide, while one restaurant received two Michelin stars, eight received one star and 25 were awarded a “Bib Gourmand.” The guide, which was limited to restaurants in Metro Manila and Cebu, was published on Oct. 30. In an interview, Feng Wei Wu’s owner and chef, Linda, said that as a restaurateur in her 60s, receiving an
RSS