DWARF GALAXY, BIG BLACK HOLE: The star-forming dwarf galaxy
Henize 2-10 in optical light (red, green and blue), radio waves
(yellow), and x-rays (purple). The suspected location of its
massive black hole is marked with a cross. Image: X-ray
(NASA/CXC/Virginia/A.Reines et al.), radio
(NRAO/AUI/NSF/Virginia/A.Reines et al.), optical
(NASA/STScI/Virginia/A.Reines et al.) The co-evolution of black
holes, almost unfathomable in their bulk, and the even more
massive galaxies that host them remains poorly understood—a kind
of chicken-and-egg problem on mammoth scales. Do black holes,
such as the lunker in our own Milky Way Galaxy, which contains
the mass of four million suns (that's about eight undecillion,
or 8 x 10^36 kilograms), drive the evolution of galaxies around
them; or do galaxies naturally nurture the gravitational
gobblers at their centers; or perhaps do they come into being
together, as a matched pair? A serendipitous discovery in a
relatively close-by dwarf galaxy may help answer that question.
Amy Rei