AN UNEXPECTED FIND: BLACK HOLE AMONG
CLUSTER OF STARS
For the first time, experts have spotted a black hole nestled in
the middle of a packed star
cluster, a place that is generally not asociated with them.
About 10 times more massive than our Sun, the black hole was found inside a
globular cluster in the elliptical galaxy NGC 4472, located some 50 million light-years away from Earth in the Virgo Cluster, reports Space.com.
A black hole is an object whose mass is so concentrated that nothing, not even light, can escape the strong pull of its gravity from within a certain distance.
The discovery, detailed in the January 4 issue of the journal Nature, is surprising because some theories predict that gravitational interactions among black holes inside a cluster would simply kick most or all of the black holes out of the cluster.
Scientists think the ejection process works like this: because black holes are usually among the most massive objects in a globular cluster, they sink to the cluster's centre.