Supermassive black hole discovered in neighboring galaxy
MAR 28, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025172
Daily Mail : Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, has discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors. Using data from Chile’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, she and fellow astronomers studied the spiral galaxy NGC 253, which appears to host a twin of Sagittarius A*, the bright radio source that lies at the core of the Milky Way and harbors a massive black hole. Ghez’s discoveries, along with the work of scientists studying other galaxies, have led astronomers to the surprising conclusion that most, if not all, of the universe’s hundreds of billions of galaxies have supermassive black holes at their core. What’s inside a black hole remains one of the biggest mysteries in physics, however.
© 2011 American Institute of Physics
