The discovery of a “brutal” black hole several times the sun is the closest to Earth so far
Despite the great and rapid development in the study and research of space sciences, and the spread of global centers dedicated to them, and the dispatch of space missions for these purposes..
However, this vast universe is still full of its mysterious secrets, of which it seems that man has only known a simple thing, the latest of which was what Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, a researcher and professor of physics at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), said about the discovery of a brutal black hole. It is located at a distance of 1,550 light-years from us and has a mass about 12 times the mass of the Sun.
She stated this in a research paper published in the Astrophysical Journal: “It is closer to the sun than any other known black hole, located at a distance of 1,550 light years from us. So, it's practically in the backyard of our home."
It is difficult to detect black holes in the complete darkness of space. They can often be observed by shining light as they devour dust and gas, or swallow stars, or collide with each other.
Although stars and other objects in their vicinity clearly feel their gravitational pull, no light can escape from black holes, so they cannot be seen in the same way as visible stars.
“In some cases, as in the case of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, they can drive the formation and evolution of galaxies,” Dr. Chakrabarti explains. It is not yet clear how these non-self-interacting black holes affect galactic dynamics in the Milky Way. They, if numerous, could affect the composition and internal dynamics of our galaxy.”
To find the 'wild' black hole, Dr. Chakrabarti and a team of scientists analyzed data from nearly 200,000 binary stars observed over the summer from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission.
The sources of interest were followed up with spectroscopic measurements from various telescopes, including the Automated Planet Finder in California, the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
And if there is a black hole, it can be detected because its massive gravitational influence affects the star's light spectrum as it orbits. Using this method, one system in particular caught their attention - a visible star with a mass slightly smaller than the Sun, orbiting something about 12 times the mass of the Sun. It completes its orbit once every 185 days.
"The black hole clouds on the visible sun-like star can be determined by these spectroscopic measurements, which give us the line-of-sight velocity due to the Doppler effect," says Dr. Chakrabarti.
The Doppler effect is the change in the frequency of the wave relative to the observer, such as how the tone of the siren sound changes as an emergency vehicle passes by.
And she continued: “By analyzing the line-of-sight velocities of the visible star - and this visible star is similar to our sun - we can infer how massive the black hole's companion is, as well as the period of its rotation, and how much the orbit is skewed. These spectroscopic measurements independently confirmed the Gaia analysis, which also indicated that this binary system consists of a visible star orbiting a very massive object.
The black hole must be inferred by analyzing the movements of the visible star because it does not interact with the luminous star. Non-interacting black holes usually do not have a circular ring of dust and accretion material associated with black holes that interact with another object. Accumulation makes the interaction type relatively easier to observe visually, which is why more of this type have been found.
"When the material from the other star falls on this deep gravitational potential, we can see the X-rays," Chakrabarti notes.
These interacting systems tend to be in short-range orbits, says Dr. Chakrabarti: “In this case, we're looking at a monstrous black hole, but it has a long orbit of 185 days, or about half a year. It is very far from the visible star and is not making any progress towards it.”
The techniques that scientists used to create other non-interacting systems should also be applied.
According to Chakrabarti, “Simple estimates are that there are about a million visible stars with thin black holes in our galaxy. But there are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, so it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. With her incredibly accurate measurements, Gaia made it easier by narrowing down the search.”
Scientists are trying to understand the formation of non-interacting black holes.
Dr Chakrabarti says: “There are currently many different approaches that theorists have proposed, but non-interacting black holes around luminaries are a very new type of inhabitant of the universe. Therefore, it will likely take some time to understand their demographics, how they form, and how these channels differ - or if they are similar - from the more well-known groups of interacting, merging black holes."
Will our knowledge of the world of black holes be limited to this amount of information, or is there information that scientists keep secret and that can be published and known in the coming days and ?years
Source: websites