About 800 million light-years from Earth, two supermassive black holes orbit each other at a much closer distance than any other pair ever discovered. One day, millions of years from now, they will meet in an accident that will shake the very foundation of reality itself.
In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journala team led by Anna Trindade Falcão, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote that limitations in telescope resolution, and other technical limitations, make studying these types of binary black hole systems inherently difficult. Yet observations provide a unique way to study the formation of supermassive black holes, which exist at the center of almost all known galaxies.
The team was looking at images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxy known as MCG-03-34-64, which is 800 million light-years from Earth. They saw three glowing bubbles, indicating the presence of a mass of glowing oxygen gas compressed into a small space. At visible wavelengths, two black holes appear so close together that they merge into one. In a statement, NASA compared the pair to “two Sumo wrestlers squabbling.”
Using NASA’s Chandra observatory’s X-ray telescope, astronomers spotted two separate but powerful sources of gas emission between the stars. Since black holes also emit a lot of radio waves, they examined the data stored in the area and found strong emissions. “We put these pieces together and concluded that we were probably looking at very distant black holes,” said Trindade Falcão.
The source of the third oxygen blob observed by Hubble is not yet known. These types of black holes are also known as active galactic nuclei, as they are found in the center of galaxies. They probably started orbiting each other after their galaxies collided in the past. Eventually, in another 100 million years or so, the two black holes will merge, sending out gravitational waves that will disrupt spacetime over the supermassive surface.
The discovery of the two black holes was “sad,” the astronomers wrote. Trindade Falcão said it happened with “a surprising decision” by Hubble.
“We didn’t expect to see something like this,” he added. “This sight is unusual in the nearby universe, and it told us that something else is going on inside the galaxy.”
In the study, Trindade Falcão and his colleagues did not rule out other explanations for what was happening, including that this was actually one giant black hole with unusual readings, but they said the evidence for their conclusion was very strong.
While similar dark pairs have been seen before, including a duo 89 million light-years away from Earth, the newly discovered binary is notable for its proximity. At 300 million light-years apart, they are the closest confirmed black holes in the local universe (the region of space 1 billion light-years across that includes the Milky Way and many other galaxies). According to NASA, radio signals have shown hints of another pair of black holes that may be close together, but that has yet to be confirmed with X-ray and visible light evidence.
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