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Chandra X-Ray Observatory Spots Rare Medium-sized Black Hole in Galaxy M82, Probably Formed From Many Smaller Black Holes
By Paul Hoversten
Washington Bureau Chief
posted: 02:24 pm ET
12 September 2000
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chandra_black_hole_000912 WASHINGTON -- Astronomers say they have confirmed the existence of a medium-size black hole that could represent the "missing link" in their search for these mysterious objects. In a news conference Tuesday at NASA Headquarters, scientists said they used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to verify that a new class of black hole exists in neighboring galaxy M 82, located about 100 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers). A black hole is thought to be a collapsed star so dense that not even light can escape its enormous gravity. The black hole that Chandra found lies a mere 600 light-years from the center of M 82. The black hole packs the mass of at least 500 of our suns into a region about the size of Earth's moon. 
| The bright spot in the center is believed to be a medium-sized black hole -- the only way to explain its rapid flickering and growing brightness. |
That puts the object somewhere between the dozens of small, sun-sized black holes found in the Milky Way and the millions of supermassive black holes as big as a million suns that lie at the center of most galaxies, including our own. The discovery "poses challenges to our preexisting notions of star birth and star death," said Martin Ward of the University of Leicester, England, a lead author involved with the Chandra observations. "This opens a whole new field of research." Scientists suspect the object may have been formed by the merger of dozens black holes since it is too big to have been created with the death of a single star.
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