One of the most relevant and pressing questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology is: How many black holes are out there in the Universe? A recent study by the Italian research institute, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), has shed some light on this.
The merging of Milky Way and Andromeda’s supermassive black holes
Milkomeda is really happening #couplegoals.
A recent study by Riccardo Schiavi, Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta, Manuel Arca-Sedda, and Mario Spera shows how the galactic merger between Andromeda and the Milky Way could go down.
Image credits: NASA.
Our neighbor in the vastness of the universe, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), is a spiral galaxy and the biggest one in the Local Group the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way. M31 is heavier than the Milky Way, in part due to the supermassive black hole keeping the galaxy gravitationally bound being almost 33 times more massive than the Milky Way.