Astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have come up with what they say is some of their best evidence yet for the presence of a rare class of “intermediate-sized” black hole that may be lurking in the heart of the closest globular star cluster to Earth, located 6,000 light-years away.
Like intense gravitational potholes in the fabric of space, virtually all black holes seem to come in two sizes: small and humongous. It’s estimated that our galaxy is littered with 100 million small black holes (several times the mass of our Sun) created from exploded stars. The universe at large is flooded with supermassive black holes, weighing millions or billions of times our Sun’s mass and found in the centers of galaxies.
A long-sought missing link is an intermediate-mass black hole, weighing in somewhere between 199 and 10,000 solar masses. How would they form, where would they hang out, and why do they seem to be so rare?
For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Paul Morris: Lead Producer
Music Credit
Tesseract by Cody Johnson [ASCAP] and Gina Kouyoumdjian [BMI] via Emperia Alpha Publishing [ASCAP], Emperia Beta Publishing [BMI], and Universal Production Music
Animation Credit:
Black Hole accreting material animation by Aurore Simmonet
Computer Representation of the Stellar Motions in the Core of M4:
Mattia Libralato (AURA/STScI for ESA)
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14350. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14350. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html.
See more Hubble videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiuUQ9asub3Ta8mqP5LNiOhOygRzue8kN
Follow NASA's Hubble Space Telescope:
· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASAHubble
· Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAHubble
· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/NASAHubble
· Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahubble
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If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
· Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard
· Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard
· Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix
· Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard
· Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc
Like intense gravitational potholes in the fabric of space, virtually all black holes seem to come in two sizes: small and humongous. It’s estimated that our galaxy is littered with 100 million small black holes (several times the mass of our Sun) created from exploded stars. The universe at large is flooded with supermassive black holes, weighing millions or billions of times our Sun’s mass and found in the centers of galaxies.
A long-sought missing link is an intermediate-mass black hole, weighing in somewhere between 199 and 10,000 solar masses. How would they form, where would they hang out, and why do they seem to be so rare?
For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Paul Morris: Lead Producer
Music Credit
Tesseract by Cody Johnson [ASCAP] and Gina Kouyoumdjian [BMI] via Emperia Alpha Publishing [ASCAP], Emperia Beta Publishing [BMI], and Universal Production Music
Animation Credit:
Black Hole accreting material animation by Aurore Simmonet
Computer Representation of the Stellar Motions in the Core of M4:
Mattia Libralato (AURA/STScI for ESA)
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14350. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14350. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html.
See more Hubble videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiuUQ9asub3Ta8mqP5LNiOhOygRzue8kN
Follow NASA's Hubble Space Telescope:
· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASAHubble
· Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAHubble
· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/NASAHubble
· Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahubble
---
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
· Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard
· Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard
· Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix
· Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard
· Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc
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