First `middleweight` black hole discovered
Baku, February 18 (AZERTAC). U.S. astronomers say a newly discovered black hole, the first intermediate-mass one ever found, may have once been the core of a now-disintegrated dwarf galaxy.
The discovery could lead to better understanding of the evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies, researchers said.
Massive stars collapse to form stellar-mass black holes, about 10 times the mass of our sun, but it`s not clear how supermassive black holes -- like the four million solar-mass monster at the center of the Milky Way -- form in the cores of galaxies.
One theory is that supermassive black holes may build up through the merger of smaller, intermediate-mass black holes weighing hundreds to thousands of suns.
"For the first time, we have evidence on the environment, and thus the origin, of this middle-weight black hole," said Mathieu Servillat, who worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics when the research was conducted.
Scientists say they believe the black hole, dubbed HLX-1, was the central black hole in a dwarf galaxy that was then captured by a larger host galaxy
The collision between the galaxies stripped away most of the dwarf galaxy`s stars, they theorize.
The future of the black hole is uncertain, astronomers said; it may spiral into the center of the host galaxy and eventually merge with the supermassive black hole there, or it could settle into a stable orbit around the galaxy.
"This black hole is unique in that it`s the only intermediate-mass black hole we`ve found so far. Its rarity suggests that these black holes are only visible for a short time," Servillat said in a Harvard-Smithsonian release Wednesday.
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