Astronomers and physicists have learned repeatedly that the universe is more creative than they are. Time and again they have peered closely at the cosmos and discovered some object or phenomenon that they had never imagined could exist. The latest surprise came last week, and it forced scientists to drop whatever they were doing and scribble hurried calculations, even on napkins and scraps of envelopes. A report in the Astrophysical Journal claimed that something gigantic is hiding in the core of a distant galaxy called NGC 6240. Perhaps it is a black hole, a concentration of matter so dense that not...
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