The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes

A pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun’s mass perform a hypnotic dance in this NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot gas – called an accretion disk – that surrounds each one. Read more: Viewed from near the orbital plane, each accretion disk takes on a characteristic warped look. But as one passes in front of the other, the gravity of the foreground black hole transforms its partner into a rapidly changing sequence of arcs. These distortions play out as light from the accretion disks navigates the tangled fabric of space and time near the black holes. The simulated binary contains two supermassive black holes, a larger one with 200 million solar masses and a smaller companion weighing half as much. Astronomers think this kind of black hole system is one in which both members could maintain a