Wednesday 28 June 2017

First-Ever Galaxy with Twin Supermassive Black Hole Center Discovered


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NASA. JPL-Caltech
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Seven
hundred and fifty million light-years from Earth is one of the most
peculiar galaxies ever discovered: one with two supermassive black holes
orbiting one another at its center. This is the first confirmed case of
such galaxies existing, although they have been theorized to exist for
years.

The
new paper, by researchers at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and
published in the Astrophysical Journal, claims that the distant galaxy
has two black holes in the center whose mass together is 15 billion
times that of our sun. Every 24,000 years, they orbit one another in one
of the longest orbital periods ever discovered – scientists did not
notice even a slight curvature in orbit during 12 years of observation.