Black hole ‘missing’ from galaxy center in distant Abell 2261 | Science News

An enormous black hole with a mass about 100 billion times larger than our sun is not to be found, NASA has said. At the heart of most galaxies is an awesome black hole that monitors galaxies with their incredible gravitational power.

The black hole found at the heart of a galaxy usually has a mass equal to the size of a galactic system.

So when NASA began studying the galaxy Abell 2261, which is about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth and is about 20 times the diameter of the Milky Way, the space agency expected find a monster black hole at her heart.

However, X-ray observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope found nothing.

The space agency said: “Using Chandra data obtained in 1999 and 2004 astronomers had already examined the galaxy galaxy Abell 2261 for signs of a massive black hole.

“They were looking for stuff that has been overheated as it fell into the black hole and made X-rays, but they couldn’t find such a source.

“Now, with new, longer Chandra ideas acquired in 2018, a team led by Kayhan Gultekin of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor conducted an in-depth study for the black hole in the center of the constellation.”

Again, the most recent study yielded no results. Now astronauts are racing their minds in search of an answer to the galactic puzzle.

One theory suggests that the supermassive black hole may have been kicked out of the center at some point in Abell’s history.

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The space agency said: “The mystery of the place of this black hole continues.

“Although the search was unsuccessful, there is still hope for astronauts looking for this terrible black hole in the future.

“Once launched, the James Webb Space Telescope may be able to tell that there is a real black hole in the center of the constellation or one of the constellations of stars.

“If Webb can’t find the black hole, the best explanation is that the black hole is well reconstructed out of the center of the constellation.”

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