Massive black hole merger forms 1 225 times mass of sun
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Discoveries keep pouring out of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Researchers observed an unusual cluster, which they dubbed the Infinity Galaxy. It appears to support a leading theory on how some supermassive black holes form.
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Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum and a team of researchers have discovered an object in space they call the "Infinity" galaxy—two recently-collided galaxies that, together, look like the symbol for infinity.
"Theories involving substantial formation of stars prior to or together with the black hole formation and growth are very unlikely."
But in the past two decades, new types of black holes have been seen and astronomers are beginning to understand how they form. Called supermassive black holes, they have been found at the center of pretty much every galaxy and are a hundred thousand to a billion times the mass of our sun.
ENTs occur when stars that are at least three times as massive as the Sun pass so close to a supermassive black hole that its colossal gravity shreds them to pieces. The resulting string of matter then spirals into the black hole in a phenomenon known as accretion.
In summer, we face toward the Milky Way's hub in the Teapot constellation, home to the galaxy's supermassive black hole.