Scientists have spotted a supermassive massive black hole hidden behind layers of gas in a dwarf galaxy in what is being hailed as yet another first for movement of gas and radiation emissions around them.
As to how such cosmic behemoths come into existence, the consensus is that the collision of stars in a tightly-packed cluster leads to a chain reaction that paves the way for the formation of giant stars. These massive stars eventually die and become intermediate-mass black holes. The remaining star cluster then moves towards the galactic center, where these intermediate-mass black holes are merged, resulting in the birth of supermassive black holes.
As mentioned above, supermassive black holes are usually found in fittingly large galaxies, making the latest discovery genuinely mind-bending. NASA's Chandra observatory has led to the a galaxy like the Milky Way usually hosts about a hundred times more stars. As for the supermassive black hole at the center of Mrk 462, it contains a mass equivalent to 200,000 suns. And despite the sheer mass, scientists think it is among the smallest supermassive black holes documented so far.
Unraveling The Giants From Early Universe
"This is one of the first times that a heavily buried, or 'obscured,' supermassive black hole has been found in a dwarf galaxy," says a profile of the latest discovery in the Chandra X-Ray Observatory existence of a supermassive black hole heavily hidden by gas. The discovery opens the doors for understanding how such anomalously large black holes are formed in the first place and what role they played in the early universe.
One hypothesis, which banks on the discovery of more dwarf galaxies like Mrk462, is that precursors of small black holes from the early days of the universe underwent an astonishingly fast growth to become supermassive black holes with billion solar mass range. However, the chances are slim that a large percentage of dwarf galaxies would contain a supermassive black hole. And that is because conditions necessary for a giant stellar cloud to turn into a medium-sized black hole are rare. However, less than a month ago, another study highlighted the discovery of four giant cavities at the center of a galactic cluster. It was theorized that a pair of supermassive black holes are responsible for the odd objects.
Source: Chandra / Harvard, NASA