3 supermassive black holes, each with a mass over 90 million Suns, found in a single galaxy

What happens to the galaxy if they merge?

Scientists have recently identified a phenomena inside the galaxy known as NGC 6240, which is some 300 million light-years away. The scientists found three such black holes with mass more than 90 million Suns concentrated in or around the galactic core. It was previously thought that NGC 6240’s irregular appearance could be due to the fact that it was the product of two merged galaxies, but data from a study done in 3-D seem to indicate that there are in fact 3 black holes found in a region measuring only up to 3000 light years in size. This unprecedented study opens possibility that the largest galaxies of the universe can form more quickly through multiple galaxy collisions.

It is not rare to see two supermassive black holes in close vicinity of each other but when three fight for habitation, it is quite rare. From a paper awaiting publication in *Astronomy & Astrophysics*, NGC 6240 has three supermassive black holes in this galaxy.

Three black holes for the price of one

In this work, an international team of astronomers puts on three massive black holes at the core of the galaxy NGC 6240 that has obviously been offset by the product of a three way merger. Because NGC 6240 is relatively close, approximately 300 million light years away, scientists at first thought that its asymmetrical shape was owed to a standard merging of two galaxies. They thought these two galaxies collided at hundreds of miles per second and are still in the mid process of merging. Therefore, researchers anticipated getting two supermassive black holes in this central region of this merging.

However, the team was able to find three central supermassive black holes with masses over 90 million Suns to study the core of merging galaxies, NGC 6240 using 3D mapping. However, the three monsters of black holes in NGC 6240 are bounded within less than a region of 3000 light years that is less than 1 percent of the size of the galaxy In addition, Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way galaxy, is estimated to be about 4 million solar masses.

“Up until now, such a concentration of three supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe,” said study co-author Peter Weilbacher of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in a press release. Scientists had come across a case where three completely distinct galaxies as well as their black holes were set on a collision course but in the case of this study observers found the supermassive black holes grouped closely together.

The finding does not only prove that a number of galaxies can merge at the same way to create the largest galaxies in the universe but it is also strange, fascinating and new. Astronomers are struck by this process because while the universe is almost 14 billion years old, they see galaxies that are too large to have come into being through, gradual, two-galaxy amalgamation.

Weilbacher said that the greatest galaxies with central ABM could develop much faster that if several galaxies experienced merging processes at one and the same time. The first indication of this situation Our observations do suggest.

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