Japanese scientists have managed to find a way to quickly "weight" of black holes. To learn the weight of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy NGC 1097 (Fornax) that is 45 million light years from Earth, the researchers needed only two hours. Published in the Astrophysical journal data, the mass of the black hole in NGC 1097 was 140 million Solar masses. For comparison, the black hole of our constellations the milky Way is lightweight and exceeds the mass of the Sun just a few times.

Read more...

Japanese scientists have managed to find a way to quickly "weight" of black holes. To learn the weight of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy NGC 1097 (Fornax) that is 45 million light years from Earth, the researchers needed only two hours. Published in the Astrophysical journal data, the mass of the black hole in NGC 1097 was 140 million Solar masses. For comparison, the black hole of our constellations the milky Way is lightweight and exceeds the mass of the Sun just a few times.

For such a rapid "weight" of astronomers has used ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is a network of several dozen radars, located in the high desert in Northern Chile.

Scientists believe that supermassive black holes reside at the centers of most galaxies, but their origin nothing is known. Usually around can detect a high degree of curvature of space, so the weight of supermassive black holes is so huge.

the Exact dependence of the mass of the black holes of galaxies is not yet bred, but it is assumed that the brighter the galaxy and the greater its mass, the greater the mass of a black hole located in its center. For accurate findings necessary arguments, and to receive them, scientists need to weigh and compare thousands of supermassive black holes. Used Japanese method will help scientists to unravel the mystery as close as possible, because you can learn a lot in just a couple hours, not decades.

the Mass of the black hole in the galaxy NGC 1097 compared to the Sun: