{"id":394576,"date":"2026-04-16T03:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T03:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/394576\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T03:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T03:40:11","slug":"two-supermassive-black-holes-are-now-heading-for-a-universe-shaking-collision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/394576\/","title":{"rendered":"Two supermassive black holes are now heading for a Universe-shaking collision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers have spotted what appears to be two supermassive black holes locked in a death spiral at the heart of a distant galaxy \u2013 and they could collide in as little as 100 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The pair, discovered at the centre of the galaxy Markarian 501 around 500 million light-years away, was identified after researchers analysed decades of radio telescope observations.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than finding one jet of particles blasting out from the galactic core \u2013 as is the case in most galaxies \u2013 they found two.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Each jet is thought to be powered by a separate black hole, each weighing between 100 million and a billion times the mass of the Sun.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mnras\/advance-article\/doi\/10.1093\/mnras\/stag291\/8551337?login=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">findings<\/a> were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Realising that this was a second jet was awesome,&#8221; lead author <a href=\"https:\/\/www.silkebritzen.de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Priv-Doz Dr Silke Britzen<\/a> of the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy told BBC Science Focus. &#8220;For me it was like: that&#8217;s how it works? I was so amazed and overwhelmed \u2013 and wanted to tell everybody what we just found.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The two black holes orbit each other roughly every 121 days, separated by only 250\u2013540 times the Earth\u2013Sun distance \u2013 vanishingly small for objects of such colossal mass.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/black-holes.jpg\" alt=\"The artistic rendering shows the center of the galaxy Markarian 501, from which two powerful jets emanate.\" class=\"wp-image-213724\"\/>The supermassive black hole at the centre of Markarian 501, whose existence was already known, partially bends the light from the jet behind it into a so-called Einstein ring &#8211; Photo credit: Emma Kun \/ HUN-REN Konkoly Observatory<\/p>\n<p>In June 2022, the geometry aligned so perfectly that light from the second jet was bent by the foreground black hole&#8217;s gravity into a so-called \u2018Einstein Ring\u2019, adding further weight to the likelihood that the system is indeed two supermassive black holes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe binary model provides a self consistent solution,\u201d Britzen said. \u201cSince these jets are directed towards us, an Einstein ring supports the scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When the pair finally merge, the collision will send gravitational waves rippling across the Universe, far more powerful than those produced by the stellar-mass black hole mergers so far detected by observatories like LIGO.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe expect one (merged) black hole to remain,\u201d Britzen said. \u201cI am really curious to observe how this \u2018dance\u2019 will continue.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have spotted what appears to be two supermassive black holes locked in a death spiral at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,46,370,141],"class_list":{"0":"post-394576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}