NASA emphasized that this collision event could provide crucial insights into the development of black holes in the early universe.
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NASA Discovers Two Massive Black Holes on the Verge of Colliding in a Dwarf Galaxy (Source: NASA).
By definition, dwarf galaxies contain stars with a total mass roughly 3 billion times smaller than that of the Sun. Astronomers have long theorized that dwarf galaxies merge relatively early, especially in the early universe, to form larger galaxies observed today. However, current technology has not allowed for the observation of such mergers in their initial stages due to faint images from great distances.
The new research employed a different approach, conducting a systematic survey with deep observations from the Chandra X-ray and comparing it with data from NASA’s wide-ranging infrared survey satellite and optical data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
American astronomers searched for pairs of bright X-ray sources in colliding dwarf galaxies to provide evidence of the two black holes. They discovered two examples, one located in the galaxy cluster Abell 133 at a distance of 760 million light-years from Earth, and the other in the galaxy cluster Abell 1758S, situated approximately 3.2 billion light-years away from us.
According to NASA, both pairs exhibited structures that are characteristic signs of galaxy collision events, which are expected to expand our knowledge of black hole development.