Black holes on a collision course

Tweet

Scientists say Chandra provides first evidence that two such mysteriesIn a very bright galaxy 400 million light-years away, two black holes are drifting toward each other and in millions of years will merge with an eruption of energy and a burst of gravitational waves that could warp the very fabric of space, astronomers said Tuesday. can coexist in one galaxy. THE SCIENTISTS said the Chandra X-ray Observatory has found the first evidence that two immense black holes can coexist in the same galaxy and that they are moving toward each other for an eventual merger. The double black holes were found in a bright, highly active galaxy known as NGC6240, about 400 million light-years from the Earth. Astronomers studied NGC6240 because it produced unexplained bursts of X-rays that appeared to come from one of two nuclei at the galactic center. Images collected by radio, infrared and optical observations showed two bright spots, but did not pinpoint the origin of the X-rays. When Chandra, with its sensitive X-ray detectors, focused on the nuclei, astronomers hoped it would tell them whether either of the two points of activity were black holes. "Much to our surprise, we found that both were active black holes," Stefanie Komossa of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said in a statement. Finding two black holes in one galaxy, said Komossa, "supports the idea that black holes can grow to enormous masses in the centers of galaxies by merging with other black holes." An artist's conception shows two black holes whirling around each other at the center of a galaxy. Guenther Hasinger, also of Max Planck, said the Chandra images captured the unmistakable markings of two black holes - high-energy photons swirling around the dense black hole centers and X-rays spewing out from iron atoms being pulled into the center at a high rate of speed