Artist’s Impression of Heaviest Supermassive Binary Black Hole

The merging of two supermassive black holes is a phenomenon that has long been predicted, though never directly observed. One theory put forth by astronomers is that these systems are so massive that they deplete their host galaxy of the stellar material needed to drive their merger. Using archival data from the Gemini North telescope, a team of astronomers have found a binary black hole that provides strong evidence supporting this idea. The team estimates the binary’s mass to be a whopping 28 billion times that of the Sun, qualifying the pair as the heaviest black hole binary ever measured. Not only does this measurement give valuable context to the formation of the binary system and the history of its host galaxy, but it supports the long-standing theory that the mass of a supermassive black hole binary plays a key role in stalling supermassive black hole mergers.