A research team led by Cardiff University scientists claim to have made a great stride towards understanding how a supermassive black hole (SMBH) is born.
The scientists used a new technique that allowed them to zoom in on one of the cosmic giants in never-before-seen detail.
The web of stars, known as XMM-2599, existed about 12 billion years ago, in the early days of the universe, when it was only about 1.8 billion years old.
It spewed out a vast number of stars in its short life. And then it suddenly stopped.
The supermassive black hole that lives at the center of our galaxy has been mysteriously sparkling as of late, and nobody knows the reason.
This dark behemoth, known as as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is four million times as massive as the Sun. Though no light escapes its boundaries, astronomers can observe the hole’s interactions with bright stars or dust clouds that surround it.
