Evidence of two supermassive black holes orbiting every 121 days in galaxy Mrk 501 suggests they could merge in roughly 100 years.
01Summary
- 01A second jet of particles was detected at the centre of galaxy Mrk 501, indicating a second supermassive black hole.
- 02The pair completes an orbit every 121 days and is separated by 250 to 540 times the Earth-Sun distance.
- 03The black holes have estimated masses ranging from 100 million to one billion times that of the Sun.
- 04An Einstein ring observed in June 2022 suggests gravitational lensing by one black hole.
- 05The findings were led by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
02Why it matters
This system could provide the first direct view of a supermassive black hole binary approaching merger, offering clues to how such giants grow and generate gravitational waves detectable by pulsar timing arrays.
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