Astronomers have spotted three black holes locked in a cosmic threesome.
The supermassive beasts are lurking within a galaxy called NGC 6240 which is (thankfully) 300 million light-years away from Earth.
The awesome ménage à trois will eventually lead to the creation of one mega black hole of almost unimaginable size and weight.
Now, we are always keen to stress our sex-positive dogma.
But in this case, we use the word ‘awesome’ we mean in to reflect the old-fashioned definition of ‘provoking awe’ rather than the modern usage to describe something that’s really, really good.
That’s exactly the right term to reflect the sheer scale of the action taking place in NGC 6240.
It was once thought the ‘irregular galaxy’ was home to just two black holes which are in the process of merging – a process which is responsible for the star system’s unusual shape.
Galaxies often consist of hundreds of billions of stars locked in a complex orbital dance with a supermassive black hole at the core.
‘Through our observations… we were able to show that the interacting galaxy system NGC 6240 hosts not two – as previously assumed – but three supermassive black holes in its centre,’ said Professor Wolfram Kollatschny from the University of Göttingen, lead author of the study which found that each of the three heavyweights has a mass of more than 90 million Suns.
They are squeezed into in a region of space that’s less than 3000 light-years across which means they make up just one-hundredth of the total size of the galaxy.
‘Up until now, such a concentration of three supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe,’ added Dr Peter Weilbacher of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam.
‘The present case provides evidence of a simultaneous merging process of three galaxies along with their central black holes.’
The discovery is very important because it sheds light on the process of galaxy formation.
Until now, scientists have not been able to fully explain how the biggest galaxies in the universe evolved through the normal processes that have previously been observed.
But this conundrum could be solved if it’s proved that three or more supermassive black holes and their accompanying galaxies can merge.
‘If simultaneous merging processes of several galaxies took place, then the largest galaxies with their central supermassive black holes were able to evolve much faster,’ Peter Weilbacher added.
‘Our observations provide the first indication of this scenario.’
The threesome will come to an end within a ‘few million years’ and produce a vast outburst of gravity waves.
Astronomers now hope to pick up these night-sky emissions and find evidence of other epic cosmic couplings.
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