At a distance of 10 million light years, astronomers have discovered a black hole that is one of the rare “missing links” of light-absorbing space objects. It has a mass that is around 550,000 times larger than that of the sun and is therefore one of the medium-sized black holes. Its position is at the center of the galaxy NGC 404. The dwarf galaxy is in the sky from the much closer, particularly bright star Mirach outshines why it was given the name “Spirit of Mirach”.
Origin notes
How Science Alert reports, the center of the galaxy was carefully examined with the ALMA radio telescope in Chile. Above all, the movement of a gas cloud on the edge of the black hole was observed. Their properties suggested the size of the black hole. Astronomers are excited about the discovery because it gives further clues about the formation of supermassive black holes. Your formation process is still not understood.
Two opposite models
Two major assumptions are in conflict. On the one hand, supermassive black holes, i.e. those with over a million solar masses, could have arisen from the contraction of matter around an already large initial mass in the center of a galaxy (direct collapse model). On the other hand, many smaller black holes could be fused together until a giant structure was formed.
In the latter assumption, there should theoretically be many medium-sized black holes in the universe. So far, however, only many small and many supermassive holes have been discovered, whereas there is a large gap in the medium-sized area. A handful of medium sized black holes have been discovered, however. The last discovery so far has been announced just a few weeks ago.
“Giant step in the right direction”
Study leader Tim Davis of Cardiff University says: “The black hole in ‘Spirit of Mirach’ seems to have a mass in an area that predicts the Direct Collapse model. We know that it is currently active and gas-consuming, so some may of the more extreme Direct Collapse models that only lead to super massive black holes but are not true. ” In any case, it was still too early to form a conclusive theory, but “this is a huge step in the right direction.”
The study was published in the specialist journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society released.
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