Supermassive black hole find defies science prediction
26 Apr 2016 by Evoluted New Media
NASA scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole in an unlikely part of the universe, which suggests there are more black holes in existence than previously thought.
NASA scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole in an unlikely part of the universe, which suggests there are more black holes in existence than previously thought.
The black hole, which weighs 17 billion suns, was located in the centre of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe. The Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii were used to locate the black hole.
Dr Chung-Pei Ma, from the University of California-Berkeley and lead discoverer, said: “The newly discovered supersized black hole resides in the centre of a massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 1600, located in a cosmic backwater, a small grouping of 20 or so galaxies.”
The researchers also found the black hole was 10 times bigger than expected for a galaxy of this mass. Previous Hubble surveys of black holes had allowed astronomers to theorise a link between the mass of a black hole and the mass of its host galaxy’s central bulge of stars – the larger the galaxy bulge, proportionally the bigger the black hole. Galaxy NGC 1600 turns those theories on its head.
The black hole, which is 209m light years away, is believed to have merged with another black hole at a time when galaxy interactions were much more frequent. Through measurements of stars’ velocities near the black hole, Dr Ma and her team were able to estimate the black hole’s mass.
The biggest supermassive black hole known to us, weighs about 21 billion suns, and can be found in the Coma galaxy cluster. This cluster contains more than 1,000 galaxies. Astronomers now think the smaller type galaxies, estimated to be 50 times more common than galaxy clusters such as the Coma Cluster, may be hiding other supermassive black holes.
