New Type of Black Hole Found—Relic of Early Universe?
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The newly identified black hole, circled, sits within a star cluster.
Image courtesy S. Farrell, U. Sydney/U. Leicester/ESA/NASA
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There's a strange new brute on the celestial block—the middleweight black hole, a new study says.
After nearly three years of spying a superbright object nearly 300 million light-years away, astronomers with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and SWIFT telescope recently announced the discovery of HLX-1, the first representative of a new type of black hole. (See black hole pictures.)
Until recently, black holes were thought to come in only two sizes: Small stellar varieties that are several times heavier than our sun, and supermassive black holes that pack the gravitational punch of many... READ MORE >>