The movie shows a merger of two galaxies (simulation) that forms a single galaxy with two centrally located supermassive black holes surrounded by disks of hot gas. The black holes orbit each other for hundreds of millions of years before they merge to form a single supermassive black hole that sends out intense gravitational waves. (Animation: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart Simulation: Josh Barnes (U. of Hawaii)/John Hibbard (NRAO)
I like just about anything that has to do with Black holes, but to find an article about binaries black holes… well hot diggitty dog. The image/movie does not represent the contents of the article, but is included ’cause I think it is cool and it shows a merging binary system. Below is a synopsis of the article provided by the authors.
We present the results of a systematic search for massive black hole binaries in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopic database. We focus on bound binaries, under the assumption that one of the black holes is active. In this framework, the broad lines associated to the accreting black hole are expected to show systematic velocity shifts with respect to the narrow lines, which trace the rest-frame of the galaxy. For a sample of 54586 quasars and 3929 galaxies at redshifts 0.1
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