A newly discovered supermassive black hole has taken astronomers by surprise for appearing much too large for the galaxy hosting it.
According to Space.com, authors of a study published in the journal Science identified a black hole known as CID-947 and determined its mass is seven billion times greater than the sun. While most galaxies' central black hole accounts for 0.5 percent their mass, CID-947 accounts for about 10 percent of its galaxy's mass.
"Our survey was designed to observe the average objects, not the exotic ones," study co-author C. Megan Urry, a professor of astrophysics at Yale University, said in a press release. "This project specifically targeted moderate black holes that inhabit typical galaxies today. It was quite a shock to see such a ginormous black hole in such a deep field."
The astronomers who spotted the galaxy used a trio of renowned telescopes, Space.com reported: the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft.
"The measurements correspond to the mass of a typical galaxy," study lead author Benny Trakhtenbrot, a researcher at ETH Zurich's Institute for Astronomy, said in the release. "We therefore have a gigantic black hole within a normal-size galaxy."
The black hole apparently formed just two billion years after the Big Bang event and its development since may require more than one review of how galaxies form.
"The black hole didn't affect the growth of the galaxy - again, contrary to many common models and ideas in the field," Trakhtenbrot told Space.com. "The black hole has done most of its growth and is shutting down. The galaxy is still growing."
