Slashdot Mirror
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.
"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.