Colossal Black Holes Common in the Early Universe

Cambridge, MA - Astronomers think that many - perhaps all - galaxies in the universe contain massive black holes at their centers. New observations with the Submillimeter Array now suggest that such colossal black holes were common even 12 billion years ago, when the universe was only 1.7 billion years old and galaxies were just beginning to form. The new conclusion comes from the discovery of two distant galaxies, both with black holes at their heart, which are involved in a spectacular collision.
--------------------------
Due to the finite speed of light, we see the two galaxies as they existed in the distant past, less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The new image from the Submillimeter Array captures the moment when 4C60.07 ripped a stream of material from its neighboring galaxy, as shown in the accompanying artist's conception. Source

Submillimeter Array Website
Submillimeter Array

(fixed wiki link)

[edit on 20/10/08 by Jbird]

Quite an interesting story, and I wonder how the electric universe model will be effected by this discovery? I've been fascinated by the idea of black holes for quite sometime, including the subsequent theories to support
or reject them. I was of the impression that there was very strong evidence to support black holes; im sure PBS Nova or such produced an episode on the discovery of many black holes.

The story went, during the cold war (i think), the US military believed the USSR were or were going to test nuclear bombs on the far side of the moon. The US sent up a satellite (Vela?) that could detect gamma ray bursts, a signature of a nuclear explosion. What they discovered was GRB's scattered seemingly randomly, with strengths of each 'burst' braking Einsteins
E = mc2 (if the burst came from a spherical object). They later went on to conclude that the bursts came from black holes, im sure of that.

Anyway, thought i'd share the news, wish they gave more than an artist impression of it all though : c