Astronomers Discover Pair of Black Holes In Inactive Galaxy 45
William Robinson (875390) writes "The Astronomers at XMM-Newton have detected a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of an inactive galaxy. Most massive galaxies in the Universe are thought to harbor at least one supermassive black hole at their center. And a pair of black holes is indication of strong possibility that the galaxies have merged. Finding black holes in quiescent galaxies is difficult because there are no gas clouds feeding the black holes, so the cores of these galaxies are truly dark. It can be only detected by this 'tidal disruption event'."
Any chance of finding gravitational waves? (Score:4, Interesting)
The discovery of pulsars rotating around each other by Hulse and Taylor was a major confirmation of general relativity because of the way they were radiating energy in gravitational waves. Is there any way to use black holes to confirm this even more? Would it be something we could help "point" a gravitational wave detector at?
(Sorry, IANAP, so I apologize if this is a stupid question.)