Two giant black holes at the heart of one galaxy may circle each other every 121 to 146 days and could merge in as little as 100 years
Two supermassive black holes may be locked in orbit at the heart of the galaxy Markarian 501, going round each other every 121 to 146 days, and on one estimate they could merge within about a century. The claim comes from a team led by Silke Britzen of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .
Two supermassive black holes may be locked in orbit at the heart of the galaxy Markarian 501, going round each other every 121 to 146 days, and on one estimate they could merge within about a century. The claim comes from a team led by Silke Britzen of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . The second black hole has never been seen. What the astronomers saw is a second jet of radio emission, curling around the galaxy’s core in a way one black hole struggles to explain. How much weight that jet can bear is the real story. A jet that will not sit still Markarian 501 is a blazar in Hercules, about 460 million light-years away, whose jet points almost straight at Earth. Astronomers have argued for decades over why that jet bends so sharply between its inner and outer reaches, and a hidden second black hole has long been one suggested answer.
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