A serendipitous discovery in a relatively close-by dwarf galaxy

See:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20110110

A serendipitous discovery in a relatively close-by dwarf galaxy may help
answer that question. Amy Reines, a graduate student in astronomy at the
University of Virginia (U.V.A.), was looking at bursts of star formation
in a galaxy known as Henize 2-10, which serves as a kind of
observational proxy for galaxies that existed in the early universe. She
noticed a suspicious radio wave source coming from a small region of the
galaxy, a good distance removed from the active stellar nurseries. A
comparison with archival data showed x-ray radiation from the same
location within Henize 2-10; the balance of radiation levels in
different wavelengths pointed to the presence of a giant black hole
accreting material from its surroundings.

That is notable because Henize 2-10 lacks a detectable spheroid, or
galactic bulge, in its center, which is usually directly related to the
mass of a galaxy's black hole. "That suggests that you just don't need
one to make a black hole," Reines says. "People have thought that
galaxies and their black holes have grown synchronously," she adds.
"This really challenges this notion and suggests that a massive black
hole could form ahead of its galaxy." Reines and her colleagues from
U.V.A. and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, headquartered in
Charlottesville, Va., reported the finding online January 9 in Nature.
(Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)


See:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20110110

Sam Wormley wrote:

See:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20110110

A serendipitous discovery in a relatively close-by dwarf galaxy may help
answer that question. Amy Reines, a graduate student in astronomy at the
University of Virginia (U.V.A.), was looking at bursts of star formation
in a galaxy known as Henize 2-10, which serves as a kind of
observational proxy for galaxies that existed in the early universe. She
noticed a suspicious radio wave source coming from a small region of the
galaxy, a good distance removed from the active stellar nurseries. A
comparison with archival data showed x-ray radiation from the same
location within Henize 2-10; the balance of radiation levels in
different wavelengths pointed to the presence of a giant black hole
accreting material from its surroundings.

That is notable because Henize 2-10 lacks a detectable spheroid, or
galactic bulge, in its center, which is usually directly related to the
mass of a galaxy's black hole. "That suggests that you just don't need
one to make a black hole," Reines says. "People have thought that
galaxies and their black holes have grown synchronously," she adds.
"This really challenges this notion and suggests that a massive black
hole could form ahead of its galaxy." Reines and her colleagues from
U.V.A. and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, headquartered in
Charlottesville, Va., reported the finding online January 9 in Nature.
(Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

See:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20110110

nice piece of work -