(ORDO NEWS) — There are three supermassive black holes at the center of the irregular galaxy NGC 6240.
Specialists studied the irregular galaxy NGC 6240, located about 300 million light-years from us. Unlike ordinary galaxies, such as our Milky Way
It has a rather strange shape (it looks like a broken egg) – and was thought to have been formed as a result of a collision of two galaxies; astronomers have long believed that this collision led to the presence of two supermassive black holes in NGC 6240.
A recent study, however, suggests that there are actually three supermassive black holes at the center of this galaxy, and according to scientists, NGC 6240 could have been formed as a result of the collision of three galaxies at the same time.
All three black holes at the center of NGC 6240 are said to have masses greater than 90 million solar masses; they are in a region of space that spans less than 3,000 light-years that is, less than one-hundredth of the size of a galaxy.
This is the first time that such a concentration of supermassive black holes has been discovered.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.