Astronomers found evidence of the youngest known black hole in our cosmic neighbourhood. The black hole offers a unique opportunity to observe it and monitor its development from an early stage of formation. According to a NASA press release, the discovery was made by the Chandra Observatory.
The black hole might help scientists understand how massive stars explode, which of them create black holes and how many such celestial objects exist in our galaxy. The black hole is a remiscence of the SN 1979C supernova and is situated in M100 galaxy, about 50 million light years of Earth.
NASA reads that according to data, Chandra, NASA's SWIFT satellite, the European Space Agency's XMM Newton and the German ROSAT observatory, revealed a bright source of Xrays that remained steady during observation from 1995-2007. This suggests that the object is a black hole being fed either by material falling into it from the supernova or a binary companion.
Calin Alexa, a scientist at the Physics Institute in Bucharest explained for HotNews.ro that black holes are the most interesting "objects" of our universe. He said that at origin they are star cadavers: some stars end their activity through such a powerful explosion that what is left behind is an object which is harder and denser than what is known.
The black holes deform space and time in strange ways which fascinates scientists.
