Wow…this is just a really unbelievable picture here.  Bringing together data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, what you’re looking at at right is a picture of two supermassive black holes only three thousand light years apart.

But what astronomers THINK we’re looking at is the joining together of two black holes to form one much larger black hole. Just in case you’re worried that this might signal the collapse of the universe, don’t be–the event they’re describing is going to take millions of years (or so they claim) to complete.

A light year, in case you need the reference, is a unit of astronomical measure that denotes the amount of distance light travels in one year.  Since light travels at right around three hundred million meters per second, that’s a long, LONG, way.  And regardless of how far apart they are, they still make a pretty
awesome picture.