Two black holes have been found munching matter side by side at the heart of two merging galaxies, suggesting that binary black holes may be more common than scientists thought.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array , a telescope array capable of peering past clouds of dust and gas into the hearts of far-flung galaxies, researchers found that this galaxy is anchored at its center by not one, but two supermassive black holes. They sit only 750 light-years apart and are actively pulling in, or accreting, material and growing.
The findings have implications for what astronomers can expect to find as they probe the universe for gravitational waves, ripples in space-time caused by dramatic processes such as black holes colliding with one another.