New Type of Black Hole Found—Relic of Early Universe?

The newly identified black hole, circled, sits within a star cluster.

     After nearly three years of spying a superbright object nearly 300 million light-years away, astronomers with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and SWIFT telescope recently announced the discovery of HLX-1, the first representative of a new type of black hole.
     Until recently, black holes were thought to come in only two sizes: Small stellar varieties that are several times heavier than our sun, and supermassive black holes that pack the gravitational punch of many million suns—large enough to swallow our entire solar system.
    Notorious for ripping apart and swallowing stars, extra-large black holes live exclusively in the hearts of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way.

     The new middleweight black hole is between these two types—equal to the matter of about 90,000 suns.

   New Black Hole Relics of the Early Universe?

     An international team, who discovered HLX-1 "almost by accident" in 2009, noticed the object was pumping out copious amounts of x-rays and radio flares—not from within the core of its host spiral galaxy, but some 12,000 light years beyond.

     The origin of these intermediate black holes may lie in centers of globular clusters, where hundreds of thousands of stars are densely packed together by gravity.