Second largest’ black hole in the Milky Way discovered

A team of Japanese astronomers has discovered an enigmatic gas cloud just 200 light years away from the centre of the Milky Way that can be the possible missing link in the black hole evolution.This may be the first detection of an intermediate mass black hole(IMBH).

Key facts :

• Astronomers already know about two sizes of black holes: stellar-mass black holes, formed after the gigantic explosions of very massive stars andsupermassive black holes (SMBH) often found at the centres of galaxies.
• The mass of SMBH ranges from several million to billions of times the mass of the Sun.The gas cloud named “CO-0.40-0.22” unusual is its surprisingly wide velocity dispersion.
• A recent study suggested that there are 100 million black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy but X-ray observations have only found dozens so far.