Are Dual Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies Rare and Insignificant?

[Astronuc]

Apparently rare - only 12 galaxies are known to exist with two black holes in their midst, according to Dr. Julie Comerford.

Comerford reported a recent observation of a double black hole galaxy at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting in Kissimmee, Florida. One of the BHs is described as skinny.

But in this newly identified galaxy about 1 billion light-years away, one of the two black holes is significantly smaller than the other and apparently starved of stars. Black holes typically are surrounded by stars; this one appears "naked."

http://news.yahoo.com/rare-galaxy-2-black-holes-1-starved-stars-180552639.html

 

[newjerseyrunner]

You mean a double supermassive black holes right? There are dozens of black holes in the Milky Way alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_black_hole#Candidates

 

[davenn]

You mean a double supermassive black holes right? There are dozens of black holes in the Milky Way alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_black_hole#Candidates

yup, that would have been my response as well

Dave

 

[nikkkom]

Galaxy mergers should complete (as far as their stars are concerned) much sooner than their SMBHs finally merge. So there should be lots of double and even triple-SMBH galaxies out there. I guess we know only a few of them because detecting multiple SMBHs in a galaxy core requires dedicated observations tailored to this task.

 

[Chronos]

So, the question is, have we observed any bizarre consequences attributable to dual SMBH in the same galaxy? I would say not, and would guess the consequences are typically trivial.