NASA spots pair of supermassive black holes battling it out as their galaxies collide

NASA witnessed supermassive black holes battling via Hubble and Chandra telescopes, revealing a detailed gravitational encounter.

: NASA's Hubble telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory captured two supermassive black holes battling as their galaxies merge. At 300 light-years apart, it's the closest pair of such black holes seen in our local universe. The phenomena will eventually culminate in a collision, producing gravitational waves. Anna Trindade Falcão led the discovery and elaborated on its significance.

NASA's renowned Hubble telescope along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided a fascinating glimpse of two supermassive black holes in a highly dramatic contest. These cosmic titans, separated by a mere 300 light-years, offer a unique, up-close view of a collision that's evolving within our local universe, much closer than any similar occurrences previously recorded.

Anna Trindade Falcão and her team from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics noted unusual diffraction spikes in Hubble's images, indicating a dense region of hot gas. This brightness, aligned with Chandra’s detection of two high-energy sources, confirmed the presence of two voracious supermassive black holes converting incoming gas and dust into intense radiation.

This entire scenario is the consequence of an ancient galactic merger, each parent galaxy originally housing one of the black holes. These immense objects will gradually spiral inward, culminating in a spectacular collision in roughly 100 million years, eventually sending out gravitational waves that will ripple through space-time.

Black holesHubble telescopeastronomy