In a historic breakthrough, astronomers have for the first time captured two black holes locked in orbit around each other – a cosmic dance that has long been theorized but never before seen.

The discovery, published in the Astrophysical Journal, confirms decades of predictions about the quasar OJ287, a distant galaxy powered by not one but two supermassive black holes circling each other every 12 years. The international research team included scientists Alok C. Gupta and Shubham Kishore from the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, along with Prof. A. Gopakumar from TIFR, Mumbai, and Prof. Mauri Valtonen from the University of Turku, Finland.

The find

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