AHEAD

Scientists used ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatories as well as the Swift X-ray Telescope to find evidence for the existence of a rare type of black hole, an intermediate-mass black hole!!

Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are massive, energetic stars at the end of their lives. They generate strong winds that sweep their surrounding material and create strong shockwaves as they collide with the interstellar medium (ISM). This process heats up the ISM to high enough temperatures to produce X-rays. This rare phenomenon was observed using XMM-Newton, ESA’s space telescope.

The neutron star merger named GW170817/GRB 170817A that took place last August, was the first cosmic event that astronomers were able to observe both light and gravitational waves! Now scientists discovered that probably this merging process also created the lowest mass black hole ever detected!!

In a recent study, astronomers used ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray telescope to observe six spiral galaxies, in an attempt to uncover the missing matter in the universe.

The last twenty years astronomers are searching for evidence to support a theory that claims that thousands of black holes surround supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centre of galaxies. Now a team of researchers at the Columbia University found this long awaited evidence!!

QSOs are the brightest, long-lived, objects in the universe. The most distant of them can provide us with a wealth of information regarding the mechanisms that create black holes as well as put constraints on the cosmological model. Recently, astronomers observed the most distant QSO that has ever been detected, in X-rays!