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Saturday, October 27, 2012

The smallest supermassive black hole


Who of us do not ever remember the Old New Year with a sad joy, and now we have a new oxymoron - a mini-supermassive black hole (BH). However, regardless of the fact that this black hole is the tiny class of super-massive black hole, its mass is still huge - it is about 200,000 mass of our Sun.

A team of astronomers led by Nathan Sekrestom of George Mason University, explore the galaxy NGC 4178, did not expect that at the center of this galaxy is the black hole, as NGC 4178 has pronounced bulge - bright area near the center of the galaxy, 


indicating the presence of a black hole. But scientists using infrared space telescope "Spitzer" and radio Very Large Array, were able to detect a faint X-ray source at first, and then the IR radiation, confirming the presence in NGC 4178 black hole.

The researchers say their discovery could lead to a revision of theories, in which the existence of the black hole in the galaxy associated with the obligatory presence in it of the central bulge.

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