Astronomers have discovered the smallest black hole ever to
exist in the history of the universe. The 30-year-old object is
a remnant of SN 1979C, a supernova in the galaxy M100
approximately 50 million light years from Earth. Data from
Chandra, NASA’s Swift satellite, the European Space Agency’s
XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory revealed a bright
source of X-rays that has remained steady during observation
from 1995 to 2007. This suggests the object is a black hole
being fed either by material falling into it from the supernova
or a binary companion. “If our interpretation is correct, this
is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been
observed,” said Daniel Patnaude of the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. who led the study.
The scientists think SN 1979C, first discovered by an amateur
astronomer in 1979, formed when a star about 20 times more
massive than the sun collapsed. Many new black holes in the
distant universe previously have been detected in