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Chandra X‐Ray Observatory Examines a New Kind of Black Hole

NOV 01, 2000
A surprising new class of middleweight black holes, perhaps 10 000 times more massive than the Sun, may have much to teach us about how galaxies form.

DOI: 10.1063/1.1333281

For decades, astronomers have been accumulating increasingly strong evidence for the existence of black holes in two distinct mass regimes: “stellar” black holes, weighing a few times the mass of the Sun (M), and “supermassive” black holes with masses ranging from 106−109M, always sitting at the centers of galaxies. There seemed to be nothing in between.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 53, Number 11

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