Not on the Horizon

Centaurus A, where galaxies collide (NASA photo)

Scientists have discovered (bold added)

a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting each other more closely than any ever before observed.

Other twin black holes won’t merge for another few billion years, but these, says Caltech’s George Djorgovski, co-author of a paper in Nature describing the new discovery, “could merge in a mere million years.”

Centaurus A is 11 million light-years away (Andromeda, the closest galaxy to our Milky Way, is 2.5 million light-years from Earth), which means that we are watching events from 11 million years ago; the two black holes have likely already merged.

Unlike Comsat in the 1960's, however, there is no technology on the horizon that will eliminate this tape delay.