Monster Black Hole Found Hiding Behind Dust in Center of Dwarf Galaxies
Typically, galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and astronomers can observe them as the surrounding gas and dust fall into them.
- Typically, galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and astronomers can observe them as the surrounding gas and dust fall into them.
- The authors showed the black hole to be enshrouded by a thick column of dust, similar to what we typically see in many actively accreting supermassive black holes.
- It was unclear whether the smaller black holes in dwarf galaxies would behave similarly to the supermassive black holes in typical galaxies.
- Finding J144013+024744's monster black hole to be actually buried behind a screen of dust is quite exciting, since the census of the prevalence of the monster black hole in dwarf galaxies is one of the few actually measurable constrains of how all these supermassive black holes were seeded in the very early Universe.