![]() ![]() student.īlack holes are typically detected when they are actively growing by ingesting gas and stardust swirling around them, which makes them glow intensely. ![]() ![]() "This result really blew my mind because these black holes were previously hiding in plain sight," said Mugdha Polimera, lead author of the study and a UNC-Chapel Hill Ph.D. New research published in the Astrophysical Journal helps to fill in this gap by revealing that massive black holes are many times more common in dwarf galaxies than previously thought. Each dwarf that falls in may bring with it a central massive black hole, tens or hundreds of thousands of times the mass of our sun, potentially destined to be swallowed by the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole.īut how often dwarf galaxies contain a massive black hole is unknown, leaving a key gap in our understanding of how black holes and galaxies grow together. For example, the Magellanic Clouds seen in the southern sky are dwarf galaxies that will merge into the Milky Way. As a giant spiral galaxy, the Milky Way is believed to have been built up from mergers of many smaller dwarf galaxies. ![]()
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