An international team of astronomers has discovered a pair of the closest supermassive black holes to Earth ever observed.
This discovery opens up new avenues of research that could reveal more about the nature of the universe and how it has evolved over time.
This approach is innovative, as it’s the first time the masses of two supermassive black holes have been measured in this way—a feat made possible thanks to the system’s proximity to Earth and the detailed observations obtained.
The masses of the black holes are estimated to be 154 million and 6.3 million times the mass of the Sun, respectively.
These measurements provide valuable insights into the dynamics of galactic mergers and the role of black holes in these processes.
This discovery suggests that there may be many other pairs of supermassive black holes in the nearby universe, waiting to be detected. In fact, this finding implies that the total number of known supermassive black holes in the local universe could increase by 30%.