31 August 2015 News

Markarian 231 quasar built around two twirling black holes

Black holes are serious business. But scientists now say that they can also twirl.

Well, sort of, anyway. A recent discovery in the Markarian 231 galaxy, located 600 million light years away from Earth, suggests that a quasar in it is actually the product of two black holes, of vast difference in size, that perform a peculiar gravitational twirl around each other.

Based on Hubble data, which revealed the find, scientists believe that the unusual arrangement was formed when two galaxies collided with each other.

So far, the Markarian 231 quasar is the first find of its kind for science.

Popular articles

Popular articles

Astronautics

Ten years of Asgardia - from idea to nation

The space beyond Earth is awash with radiation – charged particles emitted from the Sun, confined within Earth’s magnetosphere or originating from the wider Universe, are a major cause of satellite anomalies and malfunctions. Opinion

Spacecraft protection and resilience - a convergent approach