TOKYO — New evidence has been found backing the existence of a mid-sized black hole, which was long-theorized to be the middle ground between single star black holes, and supermassive ones found in galaxy centers. <br /> <br />According to a the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, a team led by Keio University professor Tomoharu Oka discovered a peculiar gas cloud called CO-0.40-0.22 near the center of the Milky Way that contained gas moving at vastly different velocities. <br /> <br />This, along with faint radio waves coming from the center of the cloud, suggest the presence of a black hole a hundred thousand times the mass of our Sun. <br /> <br />The radio signals detected from the cloud are similar to those produced by Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. <br /> <br />The Japanese team hypothesized that the midsized or intermediate-mass black hole was formed from the core of a dwarf galaxy that had previously been absorbed into the Milky Way. <br /> <br />Scientists have long believed that giant black holes grow, in part, from the merger of small ones. So the discovery is especially significant since it's the clearest evidence yet of a black hole mass in between the two size extremes. <br /> <br />The team's findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
