It might seem an unfathomably large distance, but in the scale of the Universe, 24 light years is a mere stone’s throw. Now, two supermassive black holes have been spotted circling each other at this distance, marking a closer pairing than ever seen before.
A black hole binary system consists of two black holes orbiting each other, driven by their respective gravitational pulls.
For the first time, astronomers have been able to make out both objects in this kind of system, using a collection of telescopes called the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA).
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Abigail Beall 