Strange cosmic light show as black holes 40 million times as massive as the Sun churn up gas at the centre of a galaxy

Iain Todd

Published: November 14, 2024 at 3:35 am

A pair of enormous black holes, together containing 40 million times the mass of our Sun, are churning up a cloud of gas at the centre of a distant galaxy.

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which is a space telescope designed to search for energetic bursts in the Universe, spotted the black hole pair.

The black holes are in the centre of galaxy 2MASX J21240027+3409114, 1 billion lightyears away in constellation Cygnus.

They're separated by a distance of 16 billion miles (26 billion kilometres) and orbit each other every 130 days.

What's more, they're closing in on each other and will eventually collide in about 70,000 years' time.

More:
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/at-2021hdr