NASA Discovers ‘Behemoth Black Hole’ In Unlikely Place
NASA astronomers have discovered a gigantic black hole at the centre of a galaxy in a ‘cosmic backwater’.
Spotted by Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, the find is important because it suggests that these monster objects are more common than previously thought.
Until now, ‘supermassive black holes’ - those roughly 10 billion times bigger than our sun - have only been found at the cores of very large galaxies in part of the universe packed with other large galaxies.
The black hole was found in a massive galaxy, catchily named NGC 1600, which NASA describes as a sparsely populated area of the universe.
Located around 200 million light years from Earth, the newly discovered black hole is also 10 times bigger than scientists expected it to be, based on its location.
It has been suggested that the black hole reached its massive size by merging with another black hole a long time ago.
Image: This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)
