Discover the Cosmic Missing Link: Intermediate-Mass Black Holes Unveiled by Hubble Telescope

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has potentially uncovered a rare class of black holes, known as intermediatemass black holes, in the heart of the closest globular star cluster to Earth, located 6,000 light-years away[2]. These elusive cosmic phenomena bridge the gap between smaller stellar black holes and massive supermassive black holes, with masses ranging from 100 to 100,000 times that of our Sun.

Previous discoveries, such as 3XMM J215022.4-055108 and HLX-1, point to the existence of intermediate-mass black holes in dense star clusters at the fringes of other galaxies[3]. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has been instrumental in identifying many possible intermediate black holes in globular star clusters orbiting the Milky Way, including a suspected one in Omega Centauri back in 2008[3].

Recently, Hubble's attention turned to the globular cluster Messier 4 (M4), where researchers detected a possible intermediate-mass black hole with a mass of approximately 800 times that of the Sun[2]. Although this mysterious object is invisible to direct observation, its presence has been inferred from the motion of stars orbiting it[2]. This groundbreaking discovery not only sheds light on the elusive intermediate-mass black holes but also paves the way for future explorations in understanding the origins and evolution of these cosmic giants.

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular star cluster, Messier 4. The cluster is a dense collection of several hundred thousand stars. Astronomers suspect that an intermediate-mass black hole, weighing as much as 800 times the mass of our Sun, is lurking, unseen, at its core. Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA

References: 

[1] NASA's Hubble Hunts for Intermediate-Sized Black Hole ... 

[2] A rare type of black hole never proven to exist could be ... 

[3] NASA's Hubble hunts for intermediate-sized black hole ... /