A “miracle” in the star's behavior helped to find the object.
An international group of scientists using data from the Gaia observatory was able find the black hole closest to Earth. They did this thanks to observations of a star with strange orbital characteristics, reports Science Alert.
The theoretical assumption about the existence of black holes was put forward in 1916 by Karl Schwarzschild. By the middle of the 20th century, researchers began to detect black holes by indirect methods, using observations of their influence on surrounding objects.
Read also: Astronomers discovered a “sleeping” black hole outside the Milky Way
Since the 1980s, scientists have been studying supermassive black holes, which are located at the centers of most galaxies. In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration published the first ever images of a black hole.
In a new study, scientists have discovered what they say is the closest black hole to the solar system. They did this thanks to observations of the orbital characteristics of a star similar to the Sun. The features of the light's orbit suggest that it may be part of a binary system with a black hole.
Karim Al-Badri of Harvard University, one of the authors of the study, said that the observations were part of a larger campaign aimed at detecting “sleepers » black holes, companions of stars in the Milky Way.
He admits that he has been searching for such objects for four years, but this is the first time such observations have borne fruit.
According to scientists, the star they were observing revolves around a black hole with a mass of about 10 solar masses. The researchers note that this is the first black hole in the Milky Way that has not been detected through X-ray emission or energy emissions.
“Models predict that there may be as many as 100 million black holes in the Milky Way. But we observe only 20 of them,” Al-Badri said. If the discovery is confirmed, it could mean that there are many “sleeping black holes” in our galaxy. That is, objects that cannot be detected by a burst of radiation or high-speed jets.
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Earlier astronomers using the Very Large Telescope found six galaxies surrounding a supermassive black hole. The discovery will allow scientists to understand how supermassive black holes could form and reach colossal sizes in a short time.
