Astronomers, using the X-ray observatories "Chandra" and "XMM-Newton", discovered in space a kind of "wandering" black hole of average mass.
It is known that in our Universe there are two different classes of black holes: the first are black holes with stellar masses about 10 times the Sun, and the second are supermassive black holes that are located in the center of galaxies and have masses from hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. However, there are also so-called black holes in space, with intermediate masses ranging between 100 and 100,000 solar masses.
In their study, the scientists used data from observations of X-ray observatories "Chandra" and "XMM-Newton", in the period from 2000 to 2015, for the galaxy GJ1417 + 52 (completely SDSS J141711.07 + 522540.8), which is located at a distance of about 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Bootes.
In this galaxy, astronomers have discovered powerful sources of X-rays generated by black holes during the absorption of matter. The first source is located in the center of the galaxy, a supermassive black hole with a mass of several million suns. The second X-ray source is located at the edge of the galaxy and, according to experts, is a "wandering in the galaxy" black hole of average mass (roughly the mass of this hole is about 100 thousand solar masses).
The study authors note that the medium-mass black hole discovered in GJ1417 + 52 has become the farthest and most massive "wandering" black hole of its kind. Answering the question of the origin of such an exotic object, scientists explain that observations by the Hubble Space Telescope show that GJ1417 + 52 recently swallowed up a small dwarf galaxy. Most likely, the hole in XJ1417 + 52 "lived" there earlier, and then, during the merger, lost all its stars and ended up on the periphery of the "cannibal" galaxy.
