In about 100,000 thousand years' time and some 3.5 billion light years away, two supermassive black holes will collide in epic fashion.
According to Gizmodo, a team of astronomers spotted the black holes on a collision course for each other in the Virgo constellation. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature.
"This is the closest we've come to observing two black holes on their way to a massive collision," study senior author Zoltan Haiman, an astronomer at Columbia University, said in a press release. "Watching this process reach its culmination can tell us whether black holes and galaxies grow at the same rate, and ultimately test a fundamental property of space-time: its ability to carry vibrations called gravitational waves, produced in the last, most violent, stage of the merger."
The researchers hope their study, which details their method for findings two blacks hole so close to one another, can help astronomers observe such an event as it happens.
"Some people think these systems are always going to be hung up at large separations," Haiman told Gizmodo. "Our study is important because it shows that, yes, black holes can reach very small distances from each other."
Often observed after the fact, a collision between two supermassive black holes is known to pack an extraordinary cosmic punch.
"The detection of gravitational waves lets us probe the secrets of gravity and test Einstein's theory in the most extreme environment in our universe - black holes," study lead author Daniel D'Orazio, a graduate student at Columbia, said in the release. "Getting there is a holy grail of our field."
