A ‘mysterious giant’ behind binary black holes? Astronomers uncover first evidence of a third compact object

Here’s [the original article translated into English](https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/research_news/phys/202508/t20250801_1048954.shtml) by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (edit: or by Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, or by WU Fang, it’s unclear who did the English translation).

It’s a news release. It has the Chinese original article, an original-paper author credit, CAS’s related articles, and a media contact, and it doesn’t have ads/tracking/whatever else.

(Phys.org did an unusually thorough job of re-publishing the article this time. They got all the images and even corrected some of the minor English grammar & typesetting.)

NB: CAS seem like good folks. It’s a multi-city private/public “think tank”/employer of scientists kinda like the Institute for Advanced Study in the US. So you should support them, I think, by going to their website. They’re headquartered in Beijing.

Phys.org is a content aggregator. They assemble free and licensed (question mark?) content on their site, convert it to their format, and serve ads, tracking, and whatever else Javascript code. The original is usually a better browsing experience.

This reminds me of either ton 618 or Phoenix A which has a freaking SBH orbit it