Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2015

SPACE CHRONICLES Early black hole could upend evolutionary theory by Keck Observatory A n international team of as- trophysicists led by Benny Trakhtenbrot, a researcher at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Astro- nomy, discovered a gigantic black hole in an otherwise normal galaxy, using W. M. Keck Observatory’s 10- meter, Keck I telescope in Hawaii. The team, conducting a fairly rou- tine hunt for ancient, massive black holes, was surprised to find one with a mass of more than 7 billion times our Sun making it among the most massive black holes ever dis- covered. And because the galaxy it was discovered in was fairly typical in size, the study calls into question previous assumptions on the de- velopment of galaxies. The data, collected with Keck Observatory’s newest instrument called MOSFIRE, revealed a giant black hole in a gal- axy called CID-947 that was 11 bil- lion light years away. The incredible sensitivity of MOSFIRE coupled to the world’s largest optical/infrared telescope meant the scientists were able to observe and characterize this black hole as it was when the Universe was less than two billion years old, just 14 percent of its cur- rent age. Even more surprising than the black hole’s record mass, was the relatively ordinary mass of the gal- axy that contained it. Most galaxies