Scientists have measured with unprecedented accuracy a black hole that is about 660 million times as massive as our sun, and is encircled by a cloud of gas moving at about 1.1 million miles per hour.
The supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy dubbed NGC 1332, which is 73 million light-years from Earth. Scientists made the observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile.
Black holes—the most massive typically found at the centers of galaxies—are so dense that their gravity pulls in anything that’s close enough, including light, says Andrew J. Baker, an associate professor in the astrophysics group of the physics and astronomy department at Rutgers University.
