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Cosmic Heavyweights Face Off in Rare Encounters: Three Pairs of Merging Supermassive Black Holes – SciTechDaily
Maunakea Observatories Discover Three Pairs of Merging Supermassive Black Holes A cosmic dance between two merging galaxies, each one containing a supermassive black hole that’s rapidly feeding on so much material it creates a phenomenon known as a quasar, is…
ByW. M. Keck ObservatoryAugust 27, 2020SDSS J141637.44+003352.2, a dual quasar at a distance for which the light reaching us was emitted 4.6 billion years ago. The two quasars are 13,000 light years apart on the sky, placing them near the center of a single massive galaxy that appears to be part of a group, as shown by the neighboring galaxies in the left panel. In the lower panels, optical spectroscopy has revealed broad emission lines associated with each of the two quasars, indicating that th…
