Avi Blizovsky
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Ten thousand or even twenty thousand small black holes surround the large black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. So say astronomers who used the Chandra space telescope, which photographs in the fields of X-rays. These are small black holes with a small mass, the mass of one or several stars, which probably migrated to the core of the galaxy during several billion years.
The researchers predicted not long ago that black holes will move towards the center in a process known as "dynamical friction", when they exchange positions with stars of smaller mass and push them to the edges of the galaxy.
The team found several black hole candidates within three light-years of the supermassive black hole, and calculated that there may be as many as 20 black holes. In the center is therefore the highest concentration of black holes than anywhere else in the galaxy.
This process may also help scientists estimate how the black hole at the center of the galaxy grew. This program is part of the project to monitor the regions around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The announcement was made by Michael Mono from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego.
The region of the galactic center was observed by Chandra 16 times between 1999 and 2004 using Chandra's Advanced CCD Spectrometer (ACIS). The team also includes Neil Burnett, Frederic Beganoff from MIT, Andrea Gaz and Jessica Lu. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama manages the Chandra program for the NASA Mission Center in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory manages the satellite's navigation and operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For the news in Universe Today
Black holes in astrology
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way, in Astropedia
Yadan Astrophysics 2 - stars and galaxies
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