In a perfect world astronomers would have unlimited access to wonderful telescopes and
unfettered resources to scour the universe being imperfect however means that researchers
must scramble to reserve observation time for unique celestial events and glimpses of
the out of the ordinary so when a cue forms for a never-before-seen spectacle that may light up the
cosmos with an explosion of light we naturally pay attention like now it's two super massive black
holes with a combined mass of hundreds of millions of our sons and they appear to be on a collision
course with each other what their cataclysmic encounter will unleash is anyone's guess but
it's very likely to be spectacular welcome to Factnomenal in today's video we peer across deep
space at an event that has long been predicted but never witnessed by humanity what will we see
for ages events astronomers witness in real time have been as much about the luck of looking at the
right place at the right time as any warning that an unusual event is coming on top of that it seems
highly unlikely that a telescope first put into commission almost three-quarters of a century
ago would make a meaningful contribution to the study of black holes perhaps the
universe's most bizarre showcase of the laws of physics but in 2017 the 48-inch Samuel Oschin
telescope at California's Palomar Observatory was dramatically upgraded with the ZTF camera capable
of covering 47 square degrees of sky per image and now with nightly surveys of the entire visible sky
looking for the rare and the exotic astronomers have detected what may well be a collision of
historic proportions a team led by Ning Jiang of the university of Science and Technology of China
working with data glean from the ZTF camera at Palomar stumbled across the rare and the exotic
my first instinct was that it must be related to a pair of supermassive black holes he said
even more unusual is what appears to be happening
as soon as 100 days from now the two supermassive black holes may collide
tick tock that's the sound of the cosmic countdown the team believes it detected in the center of a
galaxy some 1.2 billion light years from earth the detection of periodic cycles began when Ning Jiang
noticed a unique behavior with the light curve beaming from the galaxy the signal was interpreted
to be from a binary pair of black holes that are the active galactic nucleus which dramatically
heat material drawn in and cause the galaxy to shine extremely brightly very interesting in its
own right but a small number of these have been detected by x-ray telescopes and they're hundreds
of light years apart and won't collide for millions if not billions of years and astronomers
say the likelihood of seeing such a collision from earth is perhaps one in ten thousand in any
given year at least until this year now we switch gears from very interesting to a possible once
in ten millennia chance to witness it actually happen here's why the cycles detected by the team
shortened dramatically over just three years going from one year to only one month their observations
were confirmed by NASA's orbiting Neil Garrill Swift Observatory the team says data shows the
black holes with a combined mass of hundreds of millions of suns get as close to each other as
the sun in Pluto and will collide in the next 100 to 300 days and their just released study states
the supermassive black hole binaries are in the last stage of orbital evolution gravitational wave
radiation drives the binary in spiral and produces the loudest siren awaiting to be detected the team
expects a burst across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays to radio waves and a
massive emission of neutrinos in plain english grab a bag of popcorn we might be in for a show
predictions vary for the end of this cosmic countdown anywhere from three months to three
years from now and exactly what will be seen as anybody's guess since this incredible event has
only been theorized by astronomers they've been predicted for years just never witnessed in real
time Andrew fabian professor at the institute of astronomy at the university of Cambridge
says it's a singularly unique opportunity to see something holy new he said it's never been
witnessed before at the moment there's quite a lot of gas but the violent acceleration of the orbits
as they approach each other may cause a massive outflow of gas this could be quite luminous
or could even obscure the situation astronomers don't quite know how supermassive black holes
attain their massive size with some reaching 20 billion times the mass of the sun this may be
the chance to see if the enormous size of some of the giants is in fact due to merging with other
black holes these monsters exist in the center of nearly if not all galaxies and as galaxies merge
it's very likely their black holes get caught up with each other's gravitational forces
and the collision could be spectacular on a scale we can only imagine tick tock
as can be expected astronomers are racing to lock in telescope observation time in the
coming weeks and months team member Juan Yang of the perimeter institute in waterloo Canada
says we've seen people acting pretty fast all over the planet researchers are pouring over
radio observation archives to confirm the signal and looming event if the boom happens says Emma
of Concrete Observatory in Hungary it will confirm many things there should be a huge
burst across the electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays to radio fabian has applied for time on
nasa's neutron star interior composition explorer an x-ray telescope on the international space
station he says if it's true then it's important to get as many observations as possible now to see
what it's doing rare events do happen and yang predicts many cosmological loose ends will be
tied up if astronomers are able to witness this momentous merging he says you'll be able to test
all your predictions using this single example so what do you think about the possible collision of
two supermassive black holes will it fizzle or will it swing open doors to understanding more
about our amazing universe tell us in the comments and as always thank you for watching Factnomenal