A tiny galaxy called Leo I is located in the center of the universe.
A new analysis shows that the central region of Leo I has a monster black hole that is much larger than the mass of the galaxy. The mass of the Sun is around 20 million. 16 percent of the total mass of the galaxy is contained in the black hole.
The result is still a huge surprise. The mass of Sagittarius A, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, is 3.3 million solar mass. The mass of the Milky Way is estimated at around 1.3 trillion solar masses.
That's a huge difference in the mass ratios. We thought we had some pretty reliable rules for the ratio of a central black hole to its galaxy when we thought about the possibility of a large black hole in a small galaxy. It could tell us something new about how black holes grow and evolve.
The researchers wrote in their paper that the black hole mass is significant in many respects.
It is the first detection of a black hole in a dwarf spheroidal galaxy, it has a mass that is similar to the total stellar mass of the system, and it is a comparable mass to the black hole in the center of the Milky Way.
There are a lot of dwarf galaxies in the space around the Milky Way and other galaxies, some of which are colliding with one another and being absorbed by another. It is thought that this is an important way to grow the universe.
Studying dwarf galaxies can help us understand how these objects form.
One such potential outlier is the location of Leo I, located around 820,000 light-years from Earth. It has not much dark matter, which is the glue that holds the Universe together.
We can measure dark matter based on the influence it has on things we can detect. If the matter was affecting them, stars should travel faster than they should.
The dark matter density in the center of the galaxy changed to the outskirts, or the way it is called, by the University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory.
They took new observations of the universe using a telescope and then entered the data into a computer for analysis. The results showed that a black hole should be in the center of the universe.
Karl Gebhardt of UT Austin said that the models were screaming that you don't really need a lot of dark matter.
The black hole in the small galaxy that is falling into the Milky Way is about the same size as the one in the Milky Way. The mass ratio is very large. The black hole is almost the same as the Milky Way.
The team's paper shows that previous calculations may have missed a huge mass because of a bias towards slower stars. The new study was able to find what others missed since it claims not to have a bias.
The result is not new.
A dwarf galaxy with a total mass of 140 million solar mass had a super massive block hole that was 15 percent of the total mass. 13 and 18 percent of the total mass of their host galaxies were found with two dwarf galaxies with black holes.
Mara José Bustamante, an astronomer at UT Austin, said that it's possible that it's a common occurrence.
That could help explain how black holes get super massive. When two galaxies collide, their black holes should as well. It's possible that dwarf galaxies are feeding the black holes.
"If the mass of the black hole is high, that may explain how black holes grow in massive galaxies," he said.
The research was published in a journal.
