Earth’s ‘black hole police’ detect gravitational singularity near Milky Way | Science & Technology News
An international team of astronomers dubbed the “black hole police” has discovered a dormant black hole located right next to the Milky Way.
The research team, including Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – nicknamed himself the “black hole destroyer” – is well known throughout the astronomy community for making discoveries. new discovery of the gravitational singularity.
This time, however, they found a real black hole, a rare dormant black hole revealed by observations of the Tarantula Nebula, part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, our closest galactic neighbor. we.
Dr Tomer Shenar, PhD student Marie-Curie at the University of Amsterdam, who led the research, which was published in the prestigious journal, said: “For the first time, our team together report on a discovery. show a black hole, instead of rejecting a black hole. Nature Astronomy.
Dr Sehnar’s team discovered the black hole was born from a star that had disappeared without any sign of a powerful explosion – “a needle in a haystack” as he described it.
While scientists have proposed a similar black hole candidate, the team believes that this is the first “inactive” stellar-mass black hole to be clearly detected outside the Milky Way galaxy.
Inactive black holes do not emit high levels of X-ray radiation, which is how they are usually detected.
Star-mass black holes form when high-mass stars end their lives and then collapse under their own gravity.
In binary systems, this process can leave behind a black hole orbiting with a luminous companion star – and that’s what the team believes they have found thanks to observations obtained from The Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
It has at least 9 times the mass of our Sun and orbits a hot, blue star 25 times the mass of the Sun.
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Co-author Pablo Marchant of KU Leuven explains: “It’s incredible that we know almost nothing about any dormant black holes, given what astronomers normally believe they are.” .
Co-author Julia Bodensteiner, a researcher at ESO in Germany, said: “For more than two years now, we have been searching for such black hole binary systems.
“I was excited to hear about VFTS 243, which is in my opinion the most convincing candidate reported to date.”
Dr Shenar explained: “The black hole-forming star in VFTS 243 appears to have collapsed completely, with no sign of a previous explosion.
“Evidence for this ‘direct crash’ scenario has emerged recently, but our study is believed to provide one of the most direct indications. This has enormous implications for origins. of the black hole merger in the universe.”
The team says that despite their nickname “black hole police”, they actively encourage scrutiny of their peer-reviewed research.
They hope it will help other astronomers detect black holes of similar stellar mass orbiting massive stars – thousands of which are predicted to exist even in our own galaxy. us and the Magellanic Cloud.
Dr El-Badry said: “Of course, I expect others in the field of our research to analyze carefully and try to create alternative models. “It’s a very exciting project to be involved in.”