NEW DELHI: A new study from Indian scientists probed the possibility of some of the smallest galaxies- dwarf spheroidal galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, hosting black holes and found data "fully consistent with the presence of intermediate-mass black holes, " an official statement said on Friday.
The study by K. Aditya and Arun Mangalam of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics built self‑consistent dynamical models that include three gravitational components — stars, a dark matter halo and a possible central black hole.
Using high-quality stellar kinematic data, they modelled how stars move in these galaxies and used this information to constrain the mass of any central black hole, if one were to exist.
“We find that our models, combined with the data, place strong upper limits on central black hole masses of these dwarf spheroidal galaxies, typically below one million solar masses, with several galaxies allowing only much smaller values”, Arun Mangalam explained.
"The data do not require that massive black holes must exist but are fully consistent with the presence of intermediate-mass black holes instead, " he added.