A cosmic census triples the known number of black holes in dwarf galaxies

A large-scale survey has discovered thousands of new active black holes in dwarf galaxies and hundreds of intermediate-mass black hole candidates, tripling the known number in small galaxies from 500 to 2,500. This could help explain how galaxies and black holes co-evolve. The study examined nearly 115,000 dwarf galaxies, finding active black holes in about 2% of them, compared to 0.5% in previous studies. Researchers determined black hole masses in over 4,000 galaxies, identifying around 300 intermediate-mass candidates between 100 and 1 million solar masses.