Black holes, anomaly detected

Few things in the universe are as mysterious and interesting as black holes. There is not much confirmed information about these celestial bodies: we know, for example, that they are formed when a very massive star ends the life of it, leading to a collapse process, and we know that at this point, the force of gravity is formed. The field becomes so intense that it does not let light escape.

However, the absolute certainties (more or less) end here: a black hole, in fact, It cannot be observed directly The only way to obtain information is to discover the effects of gravity on its surroundings. Precisely in this way, by detecting the effects of anomalous gravity, a team of scientists has made what may seem to be an extraordinary discovery: there is clearly Huge black holemuch bigger than you can imagine.

Identify black holes

Like almost all the most important discoveries on the subject, the identification of this truly anomalous black hole was also accidental. An international and multidisciplinary team of scientists, led by Dr Ignace Googbalis From the University of Cambridge, he has been working on research focusing on what is known as Galactic emission lines. These lines are nothing more than the remnants of atomic or molecular transformations that occur within the gas found in galaxies.

By chance, the Juodžbalis team looked at Galaxy NGC 1277, located about 220 million light-years from Earth, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Here is the surprise: AWidespread halfa emission (one of the most common atomic hydrogen emissions), which means the presence of a black hole. And not just a black hole, but a black hole whose size, according to estimates, is about 40% of the size of the host galaxy.

NGC 1277 and the giant black hole

The data surprised scientists who also chose NGC 1277 because, based on the first results and surface investigations, it does not appear to present any noteworthy properties. After making the necessary measurements and conducting tests and examinations to ensure the reliability of the values ​​obtained, the researchers had to accept and confirm that they had encountered a problem. An abnormal celestial bodynever seen before.

As mentioned in the study published in Scientific journal ArXiv It is a black hole larger than any supermassive black hole, with a mass estimated at about 17 billion times the mass of our Sun, and as we have already been able to guess, its dimensions are not at all proportional to the dimensions of the galaxy that hosts it. Which calls into question what is known about black holes: in fact, according to the theories accepted so far, the mass of the black hole at the center of the galaxy should be closely related to the total mass of the galaxy itself.

The following studies on the extraordinary black hole

This discovery is still being studied, but since the research was published and news of the anomaly was confirmed, several international teams have decided to start analyzing the data obtained by the Goodbales team. The main goal of the scientific community now is to try to understand how such a massive black hole formed NGC 1277.

Some scholars believe the explanation could be related The evolutionary history of the galaxy itself: NGC 1277 may have undergone merger events with other galaxies containing massive black holes and these merger events contributed to the formation of such a large black hole. However, this interpretation raises more questions about the formation and evolution of galaxies, and will require more research to confirm.