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  Didn't get page done; closest SMBH pair foundNov 30, 2021 10:41 PM PST | url
 
Worked on page today. Gonna have to finish it up on Thursday—I'm off tomorrow for the 3rd of 4 deep cleaning dental sessions. = O (After one Monday...and they actually called me today to try to get me in 3 times this week. Gonna have to tell them two per week is my max, sheesh. There's only so many tranq shots to the gums I wanna take in a given 7 day period. :PP)
 
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An ESO study found the closest known pair of supermassive black holes to Earth—and they're also the closest known supermassive black holes to each other: the two cores in galaxy NGC 7727, 89 million light years from Earth (closer than the previous known pair at 470 million), the result of an apparent collision of two galaxies, are only 1600 light years apart; they're predicted to merge "probably within the next 250 million years."
 
For more details on the finding, see this thread by study lead @KarinaVoggel, who mentions for instance that the supermassive black holes were detected and their masses established by directly measuring the speed of stars moving around them—this is how the supermassive black hole Sgr A* at the center of our own galaxy was shown to exist; it's a method, I suppose, that wouldn't be available to use on supermassive black holes farther away, where our telescopes couldn't pick out the motion of individual stars around them.
 
Thanks to @n1vux for the tip!
 
 
 
 
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