NASA: Hubble telescope detects proof of the "missing link" of black holes

Black holes have been a mystery to scientists for a long time, and it has taken just as long to further understand these celestial objects. Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope managed to detect what may be the “missing link” of black holes.

Express reports that the Hubble Space Telescope was looking for a black hole that supposedly had a close encounter with a rogue star. The telescope was looking for the source of a powerful burst of x-rays that were spotted back in 2006 by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission. The Hubble snapped a photo of its discovery, the source now formally named 3XMM J215022.4-055108, which was found in a star cluster at the edge of another galaxy.

One theory that scientists have is that an intermediate-sized black hole that is present and could be the source of the x-rays.

According to NASA data, the star cluster may have been the core of a small dwarf galaxy that previously strayed a little too close to a larger galaxy that is the host of the star cluster. Due to the gravitational interactions between the two galaxies, it may have destroyed the dwarf galaxy, leaving only the cluster of stars.

At the same time, astronomers also believe that a black hole’s gravitational pull ripped apart a star that got too close, which resulted in the x-ray flare that was spotted back in 2006. In case this theory is proven to be true, then the black hole would be 50,000 times the size of the sun.

Previously, the Hubble telescope also discovered another cosmic phenomenon in the form of a bright pink cloud of gas and dust, which is where stars are born. This bright pink cloud, formally referred to as LHA 120-N 150 is found just along the edges of the tarantula nebula, known to be a place where stars are born, in the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy which is 160,000 light-years from Earth.

According to NASA, this cloud is the perfect place “to study the origin of massive stars.” The cloud also happens to contain dozens of isolated giant stars that were formed on its own than being formed in a cluster.