First dormant black hole discovered is thought to be a 'needle in a haystack'
Astronomers have seen in the galaxy adjacent to our Milky Way what they call the cosmic “needle in the haystack” – a black hole that is not only classified as dormant but appears to have been born without the explosion of a dying star. Researchers said Monday this one differs from all other known black holes in that it is “quiet X-ray” – it doesn’t emit the intense X-ray radiation that indicates it devours nearby matter with a strong gravitational pull – and it doesn’t. born in the explosion of a star called a supernova. Black holes are extremely dense objects with such strong gravity that even light cannot escape. This one, with a mass at least nine times that of our sun, was detected in the Tarantula Nebula region of the Great Magellanic Cloud galaxy and is located about 160,000 light-years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). A very luminous and hot blue star with a mass about 25 times that of the sun orbits this bl