Astronomers uncovered the strongest evidence yet for a long-theorized phenomenon: an intermediate-mass black hole. Anil Seth, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Utah and co-principal investigator of a previous study, about what he called a once-in-a-career discovery. Using two decades of Hubble data and new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, Seth and his team tracked fast-moving stars in the globular cluster Omega Centauri, revealing a black hole at least 10,000 times the mass of the Sun.
The discovery supports the idea that Omega Centauri is the core of a galaxy consumed by the Milky Way long ago. It also offers the clearest evidence so far that intermediate-mass black holes exist.
Seth also speaks about the importance of dark skies and ongoing efforts to map material falling into the black hole using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.
