5,000 black superholes hidden in NASA's X-ray images

NASA's Chandra Observatory captures images with 5,000 giant black superholes, which have the largest density of black holes ever recorded.

The new image, published by researchers from the US Aerospace Administration (NASA), is the deepest X-ray image taken by Chandra X-ray Observatory during 11.5 weeks of observation.

For three months, scientists from the Chandra project directed the observatory to a night sky region called Chandra Southern Deep, located in the constellation Fornax. This area is unique because of the colorful flashing stars but not visible to the naked eye. Most light sources (70%) are black holes. They emit X-rays when matter is attracted to the black hole event horizon while the black hole itself does not emit any light.

Picture 1 of 5,000 black superholes hidden in NASA's X-ray images
Photo taken with more than 5,000 black holes with the largest density of black holes ever.(Photo: NASA / CXC / Penn State / B.Luo et al).

Chandra Observatory observes this area of ​​the sky many times. NASA said the resulting image shows the largest density of black holes in the world. There are about 5,000 black holes in the central area of ​​the photo and researchers only know 2,000 of them.

"It is very difficult to detect black holes in the universe, because they are very far away and only generate radiation if they are absorbing matter. But when viewed with a Chandra telescope for a long time, one can see and study one a large number of black holes are developing, some black holes appear shortly after the Big Bang happens, " said Bin Luo of Nanjing University, China.

In the picture, red is the lowest X-ray energy level, green is the average energy level, the highest energy X-rays have blue light. To create this image, the researchers stacked exposure photos from Chandra and used the data stored by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Massive black holes in the field of observation range in weight from 100,000 to 10 billion times the mass of the Sun. The team thinks that their mass is increased mainly by early explosion of the universe, not by gradual accumulation of matter.

The latest data also shows that stars with masses like the Sun when exploded into a giant black hole will have about 10,000 to 100,000 solar masses.

"By identifying X-rays from distant galaxies, we are investigating more deeply about the formation and evolution of black holes of mass equivalent to stars or giant black holes in the cosmic universe. declared, " said member Fabio Vito of the University of Pennsylvania. "We are going back to the past, the time when black holes are at an important stage of development. They are young and very gluttonous."