Plenty of black holes do-si-do

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By Lisa Grossman

January 4, 2010 at 5:22 pm - More than 2 years ago

WASHINGTON — The universe is one big dance party for black holes. New observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope found 33 merged galaxies in which pairs of supermassive black holes are “waltzing” around the galactic centers.

Hubble Space Telescope images of a galaxy forming from the collision of two smaller galaxies showed two bright nuclei near the galactic center. The nuclei could be two supermassive black holes engaged in a cosmic waltz, or they could be the result of a black hole fleeing the galaxy. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope, UC Berkeley — BLACK HOLE BALL Hubble Space Telescope images of a galaxy forming from the collision of two smaller galaxies showed two bright nuclei near the galactic center.