14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Clay Telescope in Chile zoomed in on what appears to be the absolute smallest supermassive black hole ever documented in the cosmos.
The black hole, located at the core of a dwarf disk galaxy some 340 million light-years from our Solar System, is estimated to pack the mass equivalent of about 50,000 stars similar to our Sun.
This makes it less than half the size of the supermassive black hole previously considered the smallest on record. In fact, the newly found supermassive black hole is so oddly small astronomers are quite baffled by it.
In a report detailing the find, they say that, when compared to the black hole at the center of the Milky way, the one Chandra and the Clay Telescope spotted at the core of dwarf galaxy RGG 118 is 100 times less massive.
“It is also about 200,000 times less massive than the heaviest black holes found in the centers of other galaxies,” the research team who identified the black hole goes on to detail.
A better understanding of supermassive black holes
Scientists are yet to determine exactly how supermassive black holes come into being. Some say they form when large clouds of gas 10,000 to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun collapse into black holes, which then merge to form supermassive ones.
However, there is also a theory that says supermassive black holes are the end result of stars at least 100 times more massive than our Sun running out of fuel and collapsing onto themselves.
Researchers hope that a more thorough analysis of the petite supermassive black hole that lies at the core of the dwarf galaxy RGG 118 will help them solve this mystery.
“The black hole in RGG 118 gives astronomers an opportunity to study a nearby small supermassive black hole in lieu of the first generation of black holes that are undetectable with current technology,” they say.
