Closest pair of supermassive black holes yet

Kavanagh
Kavanagh
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Topic 226527
Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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"...  able to determine the

"...  able to determine the masses of the two objects by looking at how the gravitational pull of the black holes influences the motion of the stars around them ..."

Which is very similar to the discovery of the central black hole in our galaxy ie. orbits of visible objects around something invisible, heavy & small. Presumably this is a purely Newtonian affair to work out. These objects are monsters and with radius at ~ 3km per solar mass, that's gives ~ 460 million* and ~ 19 million** kilometers respectively.

Cheers, Mike.

* If within the solar system that would enclose everything out to ~ the asteroid belt.

** Less than the orbit of Mercury.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

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