Triple active galactic nucleus

Black hole threesome revealed

(Science News) Andy Warhol reportedly said, “One’s company, two’s a crowd and three’s a party.” New data reveal one heck of a black hole party, a U.S. team of researchers reports online April 19 at arXiv.org. Three supermassive black holes — humungous gravity sinks that may form the cores of galaxies — and the stars around them could be crunching together to form a single galaxy, the group says. The first two galaxies should join up in 8 million years, with the third coming in about 32 million years after that. While scientists suspect that many galaxies have formed from such pile-ons, only one other possible triplet has been discovered so far. —Daniel Strain

Cosmic Train Wreck by Massive Black Holes: Discovery of a kpc-Scale Triple Active Galactic Nucleus