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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.

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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