spacetoday.net: Black hole trio could help in gravitational wave search

Black hole trio could help in gravitational wave search

Posted: Thu, Jun 26, 2014, 11:11 AM ET (1511 GMT)
A rare triplet of black holes in a distant galaxy could help astronomers in their search for gravitational waves, researchers reported this week. Astronomers used a network of radio telescopes called the European VLBI Network, along with the Arecibo Observatory, to study several galaxies thought to contain two supermassive black holes in the centers. In the case of one galaxy four billion light-years away, they found three such black holes, with two of them orbiting each other like binary stars. Astronomers believe the interactions of these black holes could generate gravitational waves, predicted by the general theory of relativity but yet to be observed.