Astronomers have discovered the closest black hole to Earth

Astronomers have discovered black hole closest to Earth, only 1,600 light-years away, using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii.

This is the first discovery black hole stellar mass in the Milky Way, whose proximity offers a unique target for studying the evolution of binary systems, NoirLab, which operates the telescope, said in a statement.

important discovery

black holes they are the most extreme objects in the universe. Supermassive versions of these unimaginably dense astronomical objects may lie at the center of the largest galaxies. Nonetheless black holes stellar masses, about 5 to 100 times the mass of the Sun, are much more common in the universe: it is estimated that there are about 100 million of them in the Milky Way alone.

However, only a handful of them have been confirmed to date, almost all of which are active, meaning that they “glow” brightly in X-rays as they absorb material from their nearest stellar companion, unlike black holes bums who don’t do as newly discovered.

Astronomers have called it black hole idle as BH1. It weighs about 10 times the mass of the Sun and is located in the constellation Ophiuchus. At 1600 light-years away, it is three times closer to our planet than the previous record holder, an X-ray binary located in the constellation Monoceros.

The new discovery was made possible thanks to precise observations of the motion of the star’s companion. black holea sun-like star that revolves around the sun at about the same distance as the earth from the sun.

The team initially determined that the system potentially contained black hole, by analyzing data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space probe, which captured tiny bumps in the motion of a star caused by the gravity of an invisible massive object.

Karim El-Badri, astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian Institutions and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and their team made follow-up observations using the multi-object spectrograph at Gemini Sever, which were instrumental in allowing the group to identify the central body as black hole about 10 times more massive than our Sun.

“Our subsequent observations with Gemini confirmed beyond any doubt that the binary system contains a normal star and at least one black hole inactive,” El-Badri explained in a statement.

The team relied not only on the exceptional observational capabilities of Gemini North, but also on Gemini’s ability to provide data on a tight schedule, as the team had a short time frame for follow-up observations.

“When we had the first indications that the system contained black hole, we only had a week before the two objects got as close to their orbits as possible. Measurements at this stage are essential for accurate binary mass estimates, so Gemini’s ability to provide fast observations was critical to the project’s success. If we missed this narrow window, we would have to wait another year,” El-Badri said.

Current astronomical models of the binary system’s evolution cannot fully explain how the system’s peculiar configuration came about. Gaia BH1because the original star that later became this black holemust have been at least 20 times more massive than our Sun.

This means that he would have lived for only a few million years. If both stars formed at the same time, this massive star would quickly become a supergiant, inflating and devouring the other star before it could become a true hydrogen-burning main-sequence star like our Sun.

It is not entirely clear how a solar-mass star survived this episode, becoming, as observations show, into a normal star. All theoretical models that allow for such survival predict that a solar-mass star should be in a much narrower orbit than is actually observed.

This may indicate that there are serious gaps in our understanding of formation and evolution. black holes in binary systems and suggests the existence of an as yet unexplored population black holes inactive in binary systems. (EuropePress)

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