Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Two Black Holes Dancing in 3C 75

NASA ^ | September 28, 2014 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What's happening at the center of active galaxy 3C 75? The two bright sources at the center of this composite x-ray (blue)/ radio (pink) image are co-orbiting supermassive black holes powering the giant radio source 3C 75. Surrounded by multimillion degree x-ray emitting gas, and blasting out jets of relativistic particles the supermassive black holes are separated by 25,000 light-years. At the cores of two merging galaxies in the Abell 400 galaxy cluster they are some 300 million light-years away. Astronomers conclude that these two supermassive black holes are bound together by gravity in a binary system in part because the jets' consistent swept back appearance is most likely due to their common motion as they speed through the hot cluster gas at 1200 kilometers per second. Such spectacular cosmic mergers are thought to be common in crowded galaxy cluster environments in the distant universe. In their final stages the mergers are expected to be intense sources of gravitational waves.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

and one cannot experimentally ‘prove’ the big bang

Not bloody likely. However, one can make predictions about observations and those observations (e.g., cosmic red shift) will either be consistent with the implications of the Big Bang Theory, or not. "Consistent with" is not strong positive evidence, but it allows one to choose among alternate hypotheses. Newtonian mechanics and Special Relativity do not account for the observe bending of star light by the sun during an eclipse, but General Relativity does.

[BwanaNdege]

Mea culpa..... sometimes my humor detector is clouded by sleepy snakiness

and most of the time my "humor" requires an electron microscope to in order to BE detected!

[Nifster]

now that one I recognized ;)