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Astronomers believe they have discovered a black hole with a mass so small that it falls into an exclusive category, and controversially soon.
The black hole is located 1,500 light-years from our planet, in the constellation of the Milky Way known as Monoceros, to be the closest possible black hole to Earth that has been found so far.
The Ohio State University team called it the "unicorn", and astronomer Thaendo Jayasingh says: "When we looked at the data, this black hole appeared - the 'unicorn'."
From small primitive holes to the super-massive giants that occupy the cores of galaxies, the theory predicts that black holes can exist in a host of masses. However, when it comes to black holes formed as a result of collapsing cores of dead stars, astronomers have found some "collective gaps" over the years.
If a star collapses to about 2.3 times the mass of our sun, it ends up becoming a neutron star, not a black hole. Until recently, we didn't find any stellar black holes smaller than 5 solar masses.
And before any objects in that gap were found, their existence was so suspicious that when astronomers noticed the existence of a nearby red giant star in galaxy, they initially dismissed the possibility that it was an invisible small.
But Jiaysing looked at it in a different way. When a supervisor told his graduate student of the possibility of tiny black holes, he wanted to investigate.
Analyzing data from various telescope and satellite systems, he spotted a red giant in the constellation Monoceros, which was breathing its last.
The star's speed and the way it is being pulled by gravity indicate the presence of a small black hole orbiting it. The volume of this dark and silent companion was calculated as about 3 solar masses.
Astronomer Todd Thompson, who helped find other small black holes in the past, explains: “Just as the moon’s gravity distorts the Earth’s oceans, causing the seas to bulge toward the moon and away from it, resulting in a high tide, so the black hole deforms the star into A rugby ball shape with a longer axis than the other. "
For decades, it wasn't clear if anything was present in the mass gap between two forms of dead stars.
The "unicorn" now joins many other small black holes to help solve this mystery. The results have not been officially verified yet.
The results have been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a preliminary version can be found here .
Source: ScienceAlert
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