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Article: X rays unveil secret lives of black holes.
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- January 6, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Supermassive black holes lead busy lives behind veils of dust that keep much of their activity under wraps. New X-ray observations challenge the notion that these cannibals, which reside at the cores of galaxies, finished growing soon after their host galaxies formed. Instead, these gravitational beasts--1 million to 1 billion times the mass of the sun--may pack on weight much more gradually, gobbling surrounding gas and stars for up to 2 billion years.
These and other studies, all reported last month, suggest new ways to find black holes at the cores of galaxies and measure their mass. Supermassive black holes are the big brothers of stellar black holes, which ...