Astronomers have just discovered the smallest known galaxy that harbors a huge, supermassive black hole at its core. The relatively nearby dwarf galaxy may house a supermassive black hole at its heart equal in mass to about 21 million suns.
The discovery suggests that supermassive black holes may be far more common than previously thought. A supermassive black hole millions to billions of times the mass of the sun lies at the heart of nearly every large galaxy like the Milky Way. These monstrously huge black holes have existed since the infancy of the universe, some 800 million years or so after the Big Bang. Scientists are uncertain whether dwarf galaxies might also harbor supermassive black holes.
This is 70 times larger than that of the black hole, but the black hole is still 30 times larger than expected for this size of galaxy.
0 comments:
Post a Comment