"Double Black Hole System Causes Massive Cosmic Burst"
A brilliant cosmic burst 100 times brighter than our galaxy was observed coming from a binary system consisting of two black holes in galaxy OJ287, located 5 billion light-years away. The smaller black hole, with a mass of about 150 million suns, orbits its larger companion, with a mass of 18 billion suns, at near the speed of light. The burst occurred when the smaller black hole crashed into a disk of gas surrounding the larger black hole, energizing an explosive jet of radiation that ejected from the smaller black hole. This is the first time astronomers have observed a flare directly from the smaller black hole in OJ287, providing observational proof of its existence.