http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-157_Chandra_Update.html
Black holes about.
-Evidence for the youngest known black hole in our cosmic neighborhood has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. The age and proximity of this object could provide astronomers with a unique opportunity to watch a black hole develop during its infancy.
The object in question is associated with SN 1979C, a supernova in the galaxy M100 discovered by an amateur astronomer in 1979. While many likely new black holes in the distant Universe have been detected in the form of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), this nascent black hole candidate is much closer, at a distance of only 50 million light years from Earth.
Data from Chandra, as well as NASA's Swift, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory revealed a bright source of X-rays that has remained steady for the 12 years from 1995 to 2007 over which it has been observed. This behavior and the X-ray spectrum, or distribution of X-rays with energy, support the idea that the object is a black hole being fed either by material falling back into the black hole after the supernova, or from a binary companion.
"If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been observed," said Daniel Patnaude of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. who led the study.
The scientists think that SN 1979C formed when a star about 20 times more massive than the Sun collapsed. It was a particular type of supernova where the exploded star had ejected some, but not all of its outer, hydrogen- rich envelope before the explosion, so it is unlikely to have been associated with a GRB. Supernovas have sometimes been associated with GRBs, but only where the exploded star had completely lost its hydrogen envelope.
"This may be the first time that the common way of making a black hole has been observed," said coauthor Abraham Loeb, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Most black holes in the Universe should form when the core of a star collapses and a gamma-ray burst is not produced."
The idea of a black hole with an observed age of only about 30 years is consistent with some re