(ORDO NEWS) — Astronomers have discovered a new black hole in another galaxy. When a star passes close to a black hole, it fragments and collapses, “spaghettifying”.
In this case, the material of the star begins to rotate around the black hole, shrink and heat up, resulting in a flash. It is from these flashes that astronomers find it convenient to detect black holes.
During tidal disruption of a star, astronomers discovered the black hole AT 2020neh in the dwarf galaxy DSS J152120.07+140410.5, 850 million light-years away from Earth.
The effects of tidal disruption are visible exactly in the center of the frame, taken by the Hubble telescope. A black hole has an average mass, making it difficult to see otherwise.
“This discovery excited us because it shows that we can use tidal disruption events to detect more intermediate-mass black holes in ‘calm’ dwarf galaxies, as well as measure their mass,” said the authors of the discovery from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Supermassive black holes are at the center of many large galaxies like the Milky Way, but scientists don’t know exactly how they formed.
According to one theory, many billions of years ago the universe consisted of dwarf galaxies with black holes with an average mass in the center.
Gradually, the galaxies merged, and black holes merged with them, gradually becoming supermassive.
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