Russian radioastron telescope found evidence for the existence of a galaxy with a pair of supermassive black holes

OJ287 is a Lacertida, a powerful source of electromagnetic radiation located in the center of the same name

galaxy in the constellation of Cancer. Previously, scientists have suggested that the center of the galaxy is not one, but two supermassive black holes with masses of 18 billion and 100 billion masses of the sun.

Such a conclusion astronomers have done because of the unusualbehavior of one of the black holes - from time to time it flared up sharply, and its brightness increased several times. It is assumed that once every 12 years two supermassive black holes approach each other.

With the help of Radioastron, which stopped work in January 2019, the researchers studied the central regions of OJ287 and obtained data on the interaction of black holes with the accretion disk.

On the one hand, one cannot say that twistedejections and a curved disk necessarily speak of the existence of a double black hole - they could arise in other ways. On the other hand, our observations are fully consistent with the predictions of the theory and they are most easily explained by the fact that there are two black holes in the center of the galaxy OJ287.

Yuri Kovalev, the mission of the Radioastron project

Earlier it was reported that Russian scientists plan to send the largest virtual radio telescope "Millimetron" for the lunar orbit in 2025.