{"id":245427,"date":"2026-10-15T01:48:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T06:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/new-evidence-points-to-two-feeding-black-holes-just-175-parsecs-apart-lurking-in-the-early-universe"},"modified":"2026-10-15T01:48:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T06:48:42","slug":"new-evidence-points-to-two-feeding-black-holes-just-175-parsecs-apart-lurking-in-the-early-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/new-evidence-points-to-two-feeding-black-holes-just-175-parsecs-apart-lurking-in-the-early-universe","title":{"rendered":"New evidence points to two feeding black holes just 175 parsecs apart lurking in the early universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-evidence-points-to-two-feeding-black-holes-just-175-parsecs-apart-lurking-in-the-early-universe2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have found two actively feeding supermassive black holes separated by just 175 parsecs (570 light-years) in a galaxy seen when the universe was only about 2 billion years old. The system, MG B2016+112, lies at a redshift of 3.273 and is the most compact dual AGN known at this redshift. The <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2609.31826\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> was posted to the <i>arXiv<\/i> preprint server on Sept. 25.<\/p>\n<p>Models predict that <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-12-euclid-dataset-million-galaxies-galaxy.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">galaxy mergers<\/a> drive gas onto central supermassive black holes, so merging galaxies should sometimes host dual active galactic nuclei (AGN). Finding close pairs is hard because of observational limitations in distinguishing nearby bright spots.<\/p>\n<p>Strong gravitational lensing is useful for observing these distant objects. It occurs when a massive galaxy between the object and observer warps spacetime so strongly that the background object\u2019s light is bent and magnified, producing multiple images, arcs or rings. By magnifying distant sources, it lets astronomers reconstruct the object and study it in depth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers have found two actively feeding supermassive black holes separated by just 175 parsecs (570 light-years) in a galaxy seen when the universe was only about 2 billion years old. The system, MG B2016+112, lies at a redshift of 3.273 and is the most compact dual AGN known at this redshift. The study was posted [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}