SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

An intermediate mass black hole has been discovered [discovery.com] in the Milky Way galaxy, and it's just 200 light years from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the galaxy:

Using the Nobeyama 45-meter Radio Telescope [nao.ac.jp], which is managed by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the researchers found the object only 200 light-years from the Milky Way's supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr. A*). By tracking the emissions from a swirling gas cloud called "CO-0.40-0.22," they found a "surprisingly wide velocity dispersion" — in other words, this cloud of gas is composed of material that is swirling at a wide range of speeds. There appears to be no supernova activity or any other energetic event in the region that could be driving this bizarre phenomenon.

Using computer models, the researchers were able to deduce that an extremely compact object — in other words, a black hole — lives in the "eye" of this interstellar storm and it must be massive. And by "massive" they mean in the order of 100,000 solar masses-massive. If confirmed, this would make the invisible object at the core of CO-0.40-0.22 a so-called "intermediate-mass" black hole, second in mass only to mighty Sgr. A* itself. Sgr. A* "weighs in" at a staggering 4 million solar masses.

"Considering the fact that no compact objects are seen in X-ray or infrared observations, as far as we know, the best candidate for the compact massive object is a black hole," said Tomoharu Oka, of Keio University in Japan and lead author of a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Alternate coverage at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan [nao.ac.jp].

Signature of an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Central Molecular Zone of Our Galaxy [iop.org] (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/816/1/L7, arXiv [arxiv.org])

Original Submission