Astronomers have detected smaller black holes andlarger black holesfor decades.
But there’s a big question left unanswered: Where are all the medium-size black holes?
The missing link between the smaller and larger black holes has long eluded scientists.
Buta studypublished Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal may have discovered where these intermediate black holes live.
In the past, astronomers had theorized the existence of medium-size black holes.
But the problem was how to find them.
The light emitted by objects falling into these black holes is hard to detect.
(This light is usually what black hole hunters rely on for their discoveries.)
Nuclear star clusters are especially dense, massive groups of stars that occupy the center of most galaxies.
These clusters are the densest stellar environments we know about.
To test the theory, they used the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope, theChandra X-Ray Observatory.
They also found evidence that conditions within nuclear star clusters may allow smaller black holes to grow to medium-size.
Nevertheless, Baldassare calls the team’s progress in the quest to find nuclear cluster-borne black holes especially exciting.
