Two Supermassive Black Holes Are Weirdly Close Together

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https://gizmodo.com/two-supermassive-black-holes-are-weirdly-close-together-2000497101

300* ly separation is some how "weirdly close together"?

That's roughly the distance between Sol and Antares.

 L I N K 

(*NOT 300,000,000 ly -- Gizmodo got their facts wrong, again!)

I had to read it a couple times to get what theyre talking about.

But they could be right.

You can think of stars within our own galaxy as being an average of six light years apart. And you can think of galaxies as being (VERY ruffly speaking)as averaging about a million times that distance apart.

If the "pair" of blackholes in question were just your garden variety collapsed-star type black holes, and they were within our own galaxy then 300 ly apart would not be "close" to each other nor would they gravitationally effect each other enough to "dance around each other". There would likely be sixty solar systems in between the "pair".

But these two are both "supermassive blackholes" of the kind usually found in the cores of galaxies (including our own).

They were discovered to be at distance of 800 million light years FROM US, and to be only 300 light years from each other. So given what they are (SM black holes) it IS unusual for two to be found that close to each other. And since they are "supermassive" they might effect each other gravitationally. Especially since each is part of a galaxy that is crashing into the galaxy that contains the other (so both are probably falling towards each other anyway).