NEW YORK: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted that in our nearest neighbouring galaxy that features a quasar, two supermassive black holes are engaged in a violent, cosmic dance with each other.
While spotting supermassive black holes is always a major achievement for astronomers, capturing two in close proximity to one another, but also feeding off one another in a cosmic dance, is really quite amazing.
The two black holes are located within the galaxy’s quasar – the powerful core of galaxies – and are believed to have fallen into orbit with one another following the merger of two smaller galaxies.
Designated Mrk 231, the galaxy was spotted by astronomers who spotted that the binary black holes left an empty, mysterious centre at its core, which would not be found on a typical singular black hole quasar.
This ‘donut hole’, the astronomers said, is believed to be effectively carved out by the duelling actions of the two black holes, with the second, smaller black hole orbiting the inner edge of the accretion, thus creating its own mini-disk with an ultraviolet glow.
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