Astronomers from the University of Michigan have found what currently s the smallest black hole in the center of a galaxy.
The object is 50,000 times as massive as our own solar system's sun, but while this may seem big, the black hole is considered small, being more than two times smaller than any of its kind that have been discovered so far.
In comparison with the largest black holes that have been found at the heart of other galaxies, the black hole, which lies in a disc galaxy located 340 million light years away, is 100,000 times less massive.
The galaxy called RGG 118 was discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Researchers used the 6.5-meter Clay Telescope in Chile and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to characterize the small black hole.
Despite its size, RGG 118's black hole appears to consume material at the same rate as the active black holes that are found in more massive galaxies.
"This little supermassive black hole behaves very much like it's bigger, and in some cases much bigger, cousins," says Amy Reines, from the University of Michigan Department of Astronomy. "This tells us black holes grow in a similar way no matter what their size."
Black holes are either the stellar mass variety, which has the mass of several suns and form after the largest stars die and collapse, or the supermassive variety, which typically has at least 100,000 times the sun's mass.
Large galaxies such as the Milky Way is believed to have in their core a supermassive black hole, but the newly discovered object marks the first time that scientists discovered one that was found at the center of a dwarf galaxy.
Despite the size of the newly discovered black hole, researchers say that its discovery is very important to astronomers who want to have a better understanding of the evolutionary process supermassive black holes go through.
Vivienne Baldassare, from the University of Michigan, says that finding small black holes is crucial as it allows scientists to use observations that can shed light on how black holes grow to different sizes.
"Dwarf galaxies currently offer the best opportunity to understand BH seed formation and growth in the early universe," Baldassare and colleagues wrote in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Aug. 11. "By itself, the BH in RGG 118 indicates that formation pathways must exist that produce BH seeds of its mass or less."
