Astronomers have said they discovered an stupendous black hole in the Milky Way which formed in the aftermath of an exploding star a mere 2,000 light years from Earth.
According to AFP, This revealed in a report published on Tuesday, noting it was discovered in the Milky Way, with a mass 33 times that of the Sun.
The black revealed itself to researchers through the powerful tug it exerts on a companion star that orbits the object in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle.
The black hole, named Gaia BH3, was discovered by chance from data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, an astronomer from the National Centre for Scientific Research at the Observatoire de Paris, Pasquale Panuzzo, told AFP.
The serendipitous discovery is so important that scientists released details of the object earlier than planned to enable other astronomers to perform further observations as soon as possible.
“It’s a complete surprise,” said Dr Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer and member of the Gaia collaboration at the Observatoire de Paris. “It is the most massive stellar origin black hole in our galaxy and the second nearest discovered so far.”
Gaia, commited to mapping the Milky Way galaxy, is located BH3 2,000 light years away from Earth in the Aquila constellation.
As Gaia’s telescope can give a precise position of stars in the sky, astronomers were able to characterise their orbits and measure the mass of the star’s invisible companion — 33 times that of the Sun.
Further observations from on-the-ground telescopes confirmed that it was a black hole with a mass far greater than the stellar black holes already in the Milky Way.
“No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking nearby, undetected so far. This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life,” Panuzzo said in a press release.
The stellar black hole was discovered when scientists spotted a wobbling motion on the companion star that was orbiting it.
“We could see a star a little smaller than the Sun (around 75 percent of its mass) and brighter, that revolved around an invisible companion,” Panuzzo said.
There may be 100m stellar black holes in the Milky Way, but despite their vast mass and the powerful forces they generate, they can be extremely difficult to spot. “Most of them don’t have a star orbiting around them, so they are almost invisible to us,” said Panuzzo.
Stellar black holes are created from the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives and are smaller than supermassive black holes whose creation is still unknown.
Such giants have already been detected in distant galaxies th gravitational waves.
But “never in ours”, said Panuzzo.
BH3 is a dormant black hole and is too far away from its companion star to strip it of its matter and therefore emits no X-rays — making it difficult to detect.
Gaia’s telescope identified the first two inactive black holes (Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2) in the Milky Way.
Gaia has been operating 1.5 million kilometres from Earth for the past 10 years and in 2022 delivered a 3D map of the positions and motions of more than 1.8 billion stars.
The next tranche of Gaia data is due for release in late 2025 at the earliest, but the importance of the discovery led the international team to release details of BH3 early so astronomers can study it immediately.
“As soon as this comes out people will rush to observe it to see if there are any emissions from the black hole,” Panuzzo said. “That will tell us about the wind that comes from stars like the one orbiting the black hole, and also about the physics of the black hole and how matter falls into it.”
