First-ever “middleweight” black hole found

HLX-1 was discovered by chance in 2009 when astronomers stumbled upon bright amount of X-Rays emitting from it. A team of international astronomers have unearthed the first "middleweight" black hole currently known to exist in the universe.

Dubbed Hyper-Luminous X-ray Source 1 (or HLX-1 for short), the black hole was spotted with Australia`s CSIRO radio telescope in ESO 243-29, a galaxy just a mere 300 million light-years from Earth.

HLX-1 was discovered by chance in 2009 when astronomers stumbled upon bright amount of X-Rays emitting from it.

Dubbed Hyper-Luminous X-ray Source 1 (or HLX-1 for short), the black hole was spotted with Australia`s CSIRO radio telescope in ESO 243-29, a galaxy just a mere 300 million light-years from Earth.

Prior to this discovery, black holes were thought to exist in “small stellar varieties” that are three to thirty times heavier than our sun, and “supermassive black holes” that are equal to millions of solar masses.

The extra large black holes that are found in most galaxies can rip apart and stars. The new middleweight black hole is between these two types.

Going by the brightness of the X-ray and radio flares, the team placed an upper limit of the black hole to be up to 90,000 solar masses. However, experts believe for a number of reasons, a lower figure, equal to the matter of around 20,000 suns is more likely.

It is thought that the rare find could help scientists understand how supermassive black hole formed and what determines their size.

CSIRO`s Dr. Ron Ekers said, “We don`t know for sure how supermassive black holes form, but they might come from medium-size ones merging.

Astronomers are also looking for signs of disturbance around the site that would provide evidence that HLX-1 may have been the central black hole of a low-mass "dwarf" galaxy that has since been engulfed by ESO 243-49.


/themoneytimes.com/