New Class of Hot-Tempered Black Holes Bucks Trends

NASA scientists have found two smoking-gun features of an intermediate-mass black hole that suggest these newly identified objects are fundamentally different from other types of black holes, running hotter than expected.

The observation further establishes these objects as a new class of black hole, yet offers a perplexing twist: Intermediate-mass black holes do not appear to suck in matter the same way as their larger and smaller cousins do.

Drs. Tod Strohmayer and Richard Mushotzky of Goddard presented these findings this week at a press conference at the meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society at Mt. Tremblant, Quebec. The observation was made with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite and NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer.

For more on the black hole findings, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-release/releases/2003/03-33.htm