A supermassive black hole was discovered in a nearby dwarf galaxy. Henize 2-10, the Galaxy where the black hole was found, is 30 million light-years form Earth. Scientists have for a long time studied Henize 2-10, this galaxy has been forming stars extremely fast. This black hole is a million times bigger than the sun. Amy Reines of the University of Virginia stated; "This Galaxy gives us important clues about a very early phase of galaxy evolution that has not been observed before". Generally supermassive black holes exist in full sized galaxies. The size of the black hole usually related to the size of it's galaxies "bulge". A discovery a couple of years ago suggested that black holes form before the formation of the surrounding galaxy due to the fact that a galaxies off balance ratio to it's black hole. Another quote from Reines says, "Now, we have found a dwarf galaxy with no bulge at all, yet it has a supermassive black hole. This greatly strengthens the case for the black holes developing first, before the galaxy's bulge is formed."
The astronomers also found that radio waves are strongly emitted from an area near the center of the galaxy, which they say indicates a "black-hole-powered galactic nucleus". There have been black holes found that have been similar in size to this one, but the Henize 2-10 galaxy is of a very abnormal shape, small size, and also has a very strange star formation of very dense star clusters. This is an exciting discovery because it leads us closer to understanding how galaxies and black holes formed in a very young Universe.
"This galaxy probably resembles those in the very young Universe, when galaxies were just starting to form and were colliding frequently. All its properties, including the supermassive black hole, are giving us important new clues about how these black holes and galaxies formed at that time," Johnson said.
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