In an “incredible rare sighting” by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, NASA astronomers may have discovered two black holes entangled in a “death spiral.” According to Peter Eisenhardt at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena:
At first we thought this galaxy’s unusual properties seen by WISE might mean it was forming new stars at a furious rate. But on closer inspection, it looks more like the death spiral of merging giant black holes.
The lead author of the study, JPL’s Chao-Wei Tsai, says that they “think the jet of one black hole is being wiggled by the other, like a dance with ribbons. If so, it is likely the two black holes are fairly close and gravitationally entwined.”
Must be a beautiful—and terrifying—view, as the artist impression above suggests.
