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The closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes
have been observed only 300 light-years apart.

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They were detected using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
and Chandra X-ray Observatory.

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These black holes, buried deep within a pair
of colliding galaxies 800 million light-years away,
are fueled by infalling gas and dust.

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We call these objects active galactic nuclei (AGN).

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AGN binaries like this were likely more common in the
early universe when galaxy mergers were more frequent.

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This AGN pair is the closest one detected in the local universe
using multiwavelength (visible and X-ray light) observations.

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The two supermassive black holes were once
at the core of their respective host galaxies.

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A merger between the galaxies brought
the black holes into close proximity.

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They will continue to spiral closer together…

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…until they eventually merge, in perhaps 100 million years,
rattling the fabric of space and time with gravitational waves.

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