According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), British and German scientists have discovered dozens of massive stars surrounding a gigantic black hole in the central region of the Milky Way galaxy.
This discovery has surprised the scientific community, as typically, massive black holes consume anything nearby, including light, rather than aiding in the formation of new stars like this particular black hole.
The researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and the Max Planck Institute for Physics (Germany) made this discovery with the help of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
The research results indicate that these stars formed around the gigantic black hole less than one light year ago. The newly discovered stars have a mass between 30 to 50 times that of the Sun and shine 100,000 times brighter than the Sun.
Their brightness suggests they are burning hydrogen fuel at a much faster rate than the Sun. Consequently, about 80% of the stars in this cluster are expected to burn out within the next 5 million years, ultimately exploding to become smaller black holes.
