Scientists identified First Radio Waves from Middleweight Black Hole HLX-1

12th July 2012

A team of scientists at the University of Sydney on 10 July 2012 discovered the first radio emissions from the middleweightblack hole HLX-1, that lies in a galaxy about 300 million light-years away. The research team had used Compact Array radio telescope from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).

HLX-1 (hyper-luminous X-ray source 1), lies in a galaxy called ESO 243-49 about 300 million light-years away. HLX-1 was discovered by chance in 2009, because it stood out as a very bright X-ray source.

Before the discovery of HLX-1, scientists had evidence for only supermassive black holes ones a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun and stellar mass ones, three to thirty times the mass of the Sun.

As per the new study, the size of HLX-1 is around 20000 times the mass of our sun which makes it an intermediate mass black hole.

What is Black Holes?

Black holes are areas where the matter is so densely squeezed into a small space, that it makes gravity pull strongly enough to stop light from escaping