Scientists have reported the discovery of a rare, medium-sized black hole that may help answer one of the more tantalising questions in astronomy: how do their supermassive counterparts come into being?There are two well-known sizes of black hole — at one end, so-called stellar-class ones which are typically three to ten times the mass of our Sun — and at the other, supermassive ones, found at the centre of most galaxies, including the Milky Way, which are millions to billions times heavier.
The newly detected ‘goldilocks’ black hole — about 55,000 solar masses — could be a missing link between these two extremes, scientists suggested Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.Up to now, only a handful of intermediate-mass black holes — between 100 and 100,000 solar masses — have been detected, and none have been squarely in the middle of that range.
News Source: Hindustan times
