Summary

TAPE: EF02/0981 IN_TIME: 07:39:56 DURATION: 2:16 SOURCES: NASA TV RESTRICTIONS: DATELINE: Washington DC - 19 Nov 2002 SHOTLIST: NASA Animation 1 Various shots of black hole merger graphics 2 Illustration of black hole with accretion disk 3 Mid shot of NASA illustration Washington DC 4 Wideshot of NASA panelists 5 SOUNDBITE: (English) Stefanie Komossa, Max Planck Institute in Germany Yeah, we were basically expecting to see one super-massive black hole They were previous x-ray observations that showed somewhere from the galaxy we did not from which region, high energy x-ray immersion was originating So we might have expected that one of the nuclei was the source of this x-ray radiation or maybe the actual nucleus of the galaxy was actually hitting between the two bright notes we saw on Hubble Space telescope images This very central region would not appear in optical images because it is so heavily obscured so we are wondering from which point the x-rays are originating Now with this wonderful high special resolution image of Chandra, we could pinpoint the location of the x-ray emission We did not see just one rather massive black hole but actually two super-massive black holes 6 Wideshot of panelist, Guenther Hasinger, Max Planck Institute in Germany 7 SOUNDBITE:(English),Guenther Hasinger, Max Planck Institute in Germany That we have seen an active binary black hole and this is the smoking gun evidence for something that will become a major gravitational burst in hundred million years NASA Animation 8 NASA graphic depicting the two black holes 9 Mid shot of NASA graphic of the two black holes STORYLINE: In a very bright galaxy 400 (m) million light-years away, two super-massive black holes are drifting toward each other and in millions of years will merge with an eruption of energy and a burst of gravitational waves that could warp the very fabric of space, astronomers said on Tuesday Scientists from Germany's Max Planck institute said the Chandra X-ray Observatory has found the first evidence that two immense black holes can co-exist in the same galaxy and that they are moving toward each other for an eventual merger The double black holes were found in a bright, highly active galaxy known as NGC6240, some 400 (m) million light-years from the Earth Astronomers studied NGC6240 because it produced unexplained bursts of X-rays that appeared to come from one of two nuclei at the galactic centre Images collected by radio, infrared and optical observations showed two bright spots, but did not pinpoint the origin of the X-rays When Chandra, with its sensitive X-ray detectors, focused on the nuclei, astronomers hoped it would tell them whether either of the two points of activity were black holes Much to our surprise, we found that both were active black holes, Stefanie Komossa Komossa of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said in a statement Finding two black holes in one galaxy, said Komossa, supports the idea that black holes can grow to enormous masses in the centers of galaxies by merging with other black holes Guenther Hasinger, also of Max Planck, said the Chandra images captured the unmistakable markings of two black holes - high-energy photons swirling around the dense black hole centres and X-rays spewing out from iron atoms being pulled into the centre at a high rate of speed