Astronomers find new black hole, this time in our 'neighbourhood'
New York: Meet your new but shy galactic neighbour: a black hole left over from the death of a fleeting young star.
European astronomers have found the closest black hole to Earth yet, so near that the two stars dancing with it can be seen by the naked eye.
Of course, close is relative on the galactic scale. This black hole is about 1000 light-years away and each light-year is 9.5 trillion kilometres. But in terms of the cosmos and even the galaxy, it is in our neighbourhood, said European Southern Observatory astronomer Thomas Rivinius, who led the study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Wednesday.
The HR 6819 triple dance: The group is made up of an inner binary with one star, orbit in blue, and a newly discovered black hole, orbit in red, as well as a third star in a wider orbit, blue. Credit:European Southern Observatory/AP
The previous closest black hole is probably about three times further, about 3200 light-years, he said.
The discovery of a closer black hole, which is in the constellation Telescopium in the Southern Hemisphere, hints that there are more of these out there. Astronomers theorise there are between 100 million to 1 billion of these small but dense objects in the Milky Way.
The trouble is we can't see them. Nothing, not even light, escapes a black hole's gravity. Usually, scientists can only spot them when they're gobbling up sections of a partner star or something else falling into them. Astronomers think most black holes, including this newly discovered one, don't have anything close enough to swallow. So they go undetected.
Astronomers found this one because of the unusual orbit of a star. The hole is part of what used to be a three-star dance in a system called HR6819. The two remaining super-hot stars aren't close enough to be sucked in, but the inner star's orbit is warped.
Using a telescope in Chile, they confirmed that there was something about four or five times the mass of our sun pulling on the inner star. It could only be a black hole, they concluded.
The hole is part of what used to be a three-star dance in a system called HR6819.
Outside astronomers said that makes sense.
"It will motivate additional searches among bright, relatively nearby stars," said Ohio State University astronomer Todd Thompson, who wasn't part of the research.
Like most of these type of black holes this one is tiny, maybe 40 kilometres in diameter.
"Washington, DC would quite easily fit into the black hole, and once it went in it, would never come back," said astronomer Dietrich Baade, a study co-author.
"It is most likely that there are black holes much closer than this one," said Avi Loeb, director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative, who wasn't part of the study. "If you find an ant while scanning a tiny fraction of your kitchen, you know there must be many more out there."
AP