Episode 650: Dancing, Flaring Supermassive Black Holes Prove Stephen Hawking's Theory

The Moon orbits around the Earth. The Earth orbits around the Sun. And out in the distant Universe, astronomers have found a system that takes this logical progression to its most extreme. There’s a system where a supermassive black hole with millions of times the mass of the Sun orbits another black hole with billions of times the mass of the Sun.

How astronomers discovered this incredible interaction took careful observations, imagination, and the hard work of the Spitzer Space Telescope, taken during its final years of operation.

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Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / [email protected]
Karla Thompson - @karlaii / https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEItkORQYd4Wf0TpgYI_1fw
Chad Weber - [email protected]

References:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-080&fbclid=IwAR2MTTay3H5hxWWjwGFeL5PrdojNdKAI70HqSgFdzOBNlPP1UcjLRWQimFg
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/active_galaxies1.html
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.09309
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/spitzer/
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/1075/spitzer-exoplanet-observation-of-hd-80606b/
http://legacy.spitzer.caltech.edu/features/articles/20051220.shtml
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZHRjrhziWw