UC Berkeley astronomers have discovered a second massive black hole within another galaxy, a finding that supports the theory that galaxies grow by merging with other galaxies.
Ryan Chornock, a campus associate adjunct professor of astronomy and co-author of the paper about the discovery, said that most galaxies are known to have massive black holes at their centers. This galaxy, however, already had one black hole at its center in addition to the newly discovered one.
“We have long suspected that the way galaxies grow is by basically eating other galaxies,” said Raffaella Margutti, campus associate professor of astronomy and physics and paper co-author. “We were suspecting that in the center of a galaxy we might have not one, but multiple black holes.”…