2014/08/21

Intermediate-mass black holes exist!




 Image of the M82 Galaxy taken by Hubble Space Telescope

While stellar mass black holes (with tens of Solar masses) and supermassive black holes (up to billions of Solar masses) have been widely studied, the existence of black holes with intermediate masses has been uncertain.
A recently published paper in Nature has looked at a black hole in the galaxy M82. Using the measurements of X-ray oscillations and scaling relations observed in stellar mass black holes, they estimate this black hole to have a mass of ~400 Solar mass. This places it within the range of the previously unconfirmed intermediate mass black holes.

Read more at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13710.html

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