Scientists Find Elusive Giant Black Hole Pairs

This graphic shows two of five new pairs of supermassive black holes recently identified by astronomers using a combination of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the ground-based Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey. This discovery could help astronomers better understand how giant black holes grow and how they may produce the strongest gravitational wave signals in the Universe.

Credit: NASA

Each pair contains two supermassive black holes weighing millions of times the mass of the Sun. These black hole couples formed when two galaxies collided and merged with each other, forcing their supermassive black holes close together. While theoretical models have predicted such giant growing black hole pairings should be relatively abundant, they have been difficult to find.

Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra’s science and flight operations.

Contacts and sources:
Molly Porter
Marshall Space Flight Center