Trio of Big Black Holes Spotted In Galaxy Smashup

sciencehabit writes Astronomers staring across the universe have spotted a startling scene: three supermassive black holes orbiting close to one another, two of them just a few hundred light-years apart. The trio, housed in a pair of colliding galaxies, may help scientists hunting for ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves.

Comments

Re:Why did I read that as nipples in space time

[antifoidulus]

probably because the title talks about big black holes and a "smashup".....

Re:A four million year orbit

[Thanshin]

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?" - The Quarterly Review, March, 1825.

"That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced." - Scientific American, January 2, 1909.

"A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere." - The New York Times, January 13, 1920

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." - Lee De Forest, 1957

They are 4.3 billion light-years away. They have already orbited each other a thousand full cycles since the observation (Well, you know what I mean.)
and they will spin another thousand before anything from here can reach them.

Re:Please explain

[Muad'Dave]

For all intents and purposes, the objects are the same distance from Earth. They're 450 light-years from each other and both are approximately 4.3 BILLION light-years from Earth. The maximum difference in distance between object A and Earth and object B and Earth is 0.000010465116% (450 / 4.3x10^9 * 100). Close enough to the same distance. For reference, the same delta applied to 1 AU (93,000,000 mile Earth-Sun distance) yields 9.73 miles.