Black holes' fatal attraction triggers galaxies' change of heart

Supermassive black holes at the hearts of large galaxies merge when their host galaxies do, say Professor David Merritt of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Professor Ron Ekers of CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility in Sydney, Australia.

The astronomers make their claim in a paper published online in <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.shtml">Science Express</a> on August 1.

Merritt and Ekers' model is the strongest evidence to date that the black holes' mutual attraction ends in an embrace rather than an endless waltz.

Added by Andrew Wright on 2002-08-05