Two supermassive black holes spotted by NASA telescopes are only 300 light years apart—unnervingly close in galactic terms. The celestial drainholes registered as spikes of bright light and were then imaged by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope, which revealed a darker truth within.
Astronomers serendipitously found the black holes when Hubble's observations revealed three spikes of bright light within the glowing gas of a galaxy. They published their discovery Monday in The Astrophysical Journal.
That paper is titled "Resolving a Candidate Dual Active Galactic Nucleus with ∼100 pc Separation in MCG-03-34-64."
We report the serendipitous multiwavelength discovery of a candidate dual black hole system with a separation of ∼100 pc, in the gas-rich luminous infrared galaxy MCG-03-34-64 (z = 0.016). Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys observations show three distinct optical centroids in the [O iii] narrow-band and F814W images. Subsequent analysis of Chandra/ACIS data shows two spatially resolved peaks of equal intensity in the neutral Fe Kα (6.2–6.6 keV) band, while high-resolution radio continuum observations with the Very Large Array at 8.46 GHz (3.6 cm band) show two spatially coincident radio peaks. Fast shocks as the ionizing source seem unlikely, given the energies required for the production of Fe Kα. If confirmed, the separation of ∼100 pc would represent the closest dual active galactic nuclei reported to date with spatially resolved, multiwavelength observations.
Adds researcher Anna Trindade Falcão: "This view is not a common occurrence in the nearby universe, and told us there's something else going on inside the galaxy."
Both supermassive black holes once served as the centers of their respective galaxies, but a galactic merger brought the two objects much closer together. Eventually, their close spiral will result in a merger in about 100 million years, according to NASA, causing an energetic release of gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of space and tim
