Space Cannibal: Ginormous Black Hole Caught Eating Another

SPACE.com ^ | 8/31/11 | Charles Q. Choi

[NormsRevenge]

A monstrous black hole at the heart of one galaxy is being devoured by a still larger black hole in another, scientists say. The discovery is the first of its kind.

At the centers of virtually all large galaxies are black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. Models simulating the formation and growth of galaxies predict their black holes evolve as the galaxies do, by merging with others.

Astronomers had witnessed the final stages of the merging of galaxies of equal mass, so-called major mergers. Minor mergers between galaxies and smaller companions should be even more common, but, strangely, these had not been seen until now. ..

Minor merger

In the new study, scientists may have unexpectedly detected a minor merger about 160 million light-years away in a galaxy dubbed NGC3393.

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, investigators have detected two black holes at its center, one about 30 million times the mass of the sun, and one at least 1 million times the mass of the sun, separated by only about 490 light-years. They are the closest supermassive black holes to Earth ever seen, according to a NASA statement.

"Seeing this was altogether a surprise," study lead author Giuseppina Fabbiano, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., told SPACE.com.

[Condor51]

'Space Cannibal: Ginormous Black Hole Caught Eating Another'