New form of black hole appears

A new type of black hole about 500 times the size of the sun has just been discovered by an international team of astronomers.

The discovery of a galaxy located about 290 million light-years from Earth is published in Nature.

Until now, large or super-large black holes (several million to several billion times more massive than the mass of solar masses) have been at the center of galaxies, or are about the same size as a pine star. usually (about three to 20 solar masses).

This new finding is the first solid evidence of a group of medium-sized black holes. The team led by astronomers at the Center d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France. They have discovered a new black hole thanks to X-ray Newton's X-ray space telescope of the European Aviation Authority.

Illustration of the HLX-1 source (bright blue object in the upper left corner of the galaxy bulge) in the periphery of the ESO spiral galaxy 243-49. This is the first convincing evidence of the existence of a medium-sized black hole. (Photo: Heidi Sagerud.)

The main author of the study, Dr. Sean Farrel, now works at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester, said: 'While there are large numbers of people accept that black holes are about the size of stars. created in the dying star stage, but we still don't know how the supermassive black holes form. '

He also added: 'There is a theory that supermassive black holes can form because many medium sized black holes fit together. However, to verify this hypothesis, we must prove the existence of medium black holes'.

'This is the first discovery so far about medium-sized black holes after a long time searching for them. This finding is critical. While we know that black holes of the size of stars are the remnants of large stars, the mechanism of formation of great black holes has yet to be discovered. So finding the Green Corridor-1 is an important step towards a deeper understanding of the formation of giant black holes that exist in the center of the Milky Way galaxy and other galaxies. '

A black hole is a remnant of a star that explodes with a powerful gravitational field that can attract any nearby light without reflecting it.

Astrophysicists have long believed that there may be a group of medium-sized black holes, with masses several hundred to several thousand times larger than the sun. However, such black holes have not obtained any credible evidence so far.

The new source is named HLX-1 located on the edge of ESO galaxy 243-49. It is a very powerful source of X-ray light, with a maximum solar brightness of about 260 million times.

The X-ray signal from the HL-1 and the lack of a collated copy in the optical images confirms that it is neither a close-up star nor a galaxy as its background, its location only It turns out that it is not the central engine of the galaxy.

Observations conducted with the XMM-Newton telescope were carried out from November 23, 2004 to November 28, 2008. The team showed that the HL-1 has a variety in X-ray signals. It turns out that it must be a single object rather than a fuzzy group of sources. Large observed radiation cannot be explained if the HLX-1 contains a black hole 500 times larger than the solar mass. No other explanation is more appropriate for these data.