Earthsky.org - 4 December 2013
Astronomers have spotted what appear to be two supermassive black holes 3.8 billion light-years from Earth, circling each other like dance partners.
Two black holes are entwined in a gravitational tango in this artist’s conception. Supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies are thought to form through the merging of smaller, yet still massive black holes, such as the ones depicted here. Image credit: NASA
The incredibly rare sighting of what appear to be two supermassive black holes at the heart of a remote galaxy was made with the help of NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
Follow-up observations with the Australian Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri, Australia, and the Gemini South telescope in Chile, revealed unusual features in the galaxy, including a lumpy jet thought to be the result of one black hole causing the jet of the other to sway.
“We think the jet of one black hole is being wiggled by the other, like a dance with ribbons,” said Chao-Wei Tsai of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who is lead author of a paper on the findings appearing in the Dec. 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal. “If so, it is likely the two black holes are fairly close and gravitationally entwined.”
