Astronomers Discover Supermassive , 'Monster' Black Hole , in Dim Dwarf Galaxy.
'The Independent' reports that scientists have discovered a "mini" black hole hiding in a relatively small galaxy about 110 million light years away.
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The "mini" black hole has a reported mass estimated to be about 200,000 times that of the sun.
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It is located in a small galaxy called Mrk 462, which contains just several hundred million stars.
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In comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy contains approximately one hundred billion stars.
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This black hole in Mrk 462 is among the smallest of the supermassive, or monster, black holes.
Black holes like this are notoriously hard to find, Jack Parker, co-author of the study, Dartmouth College, via 'The Independent'.
Dwarf galaxies are too small and dim for astronomers to track the motion of the stars they contain and locate black holes.
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Instead, astronomers search for other signs of black holes, like superheated gas and brightly-glowing x-rays.
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Because buried black holes are even harder to detect than exposed ones, finding this example might mean there are a lot more dwarf galaxies out there with similar black holes, Ryan Hickox, astronomer and co-author of the study, via 'The Independent'.
This is important because it could help address a major question in astrophysics: How did black holes get so big so early in the universe?, Ryan Hickox, astronomer and co-author of the study, via 'The Independent'.
We can’t make strong conclusions from one example, but this result should encourage much more extensive searches for buried black holes in dwarf galaxies.
We’re excited about what we might learn, Jack Parker, co-author of the study, Dartmouth College, via 'The Independent'