Scientists have presently discovered a 'hidden' black hole, called VLA J2130+12, hiding within the Milky Way. The reason it has elude astronomers until now is that it hasn't been acting the way black holes usually do.
Simply put, this black hole is quieter than we might expect and is in a lot of ways a "stealth black hole", as one of the astronomers describe it. It's pulling in nearby material, like all black holes do, but at a extremely slow rate – and that's why it's before been missed.
What's more, the latest discovery indicates there might be millions of these stealth black holes hidden across the Universe waiting to be exposed. Astronomers: recalibrate your telescopes.
Simply put, this black hole is quieter than we might expect and is in a lot of ways a "stealth black hole", as one of the astronomers describe it. It's pulling in nearby material, like all black holes do, but at a extremely slow rate – and that's why it's before been missed.
What's more, the latest discovery indicates there might be millions of these stealth black holes hidden across the Universe waiting to be exposed. Astronomers: recalibrate your telescopes.
Spotting black holes isn't quite as easy as pointing a telescope at the sky – we can only actually 'see' them based on the result they have on nearby matter, which means these celestial phenomenon can go undetected for a very long time.
"Usually, we discover black holes when they are pulling in lots of material," explained guide researcher Bailey Tetarenko from the University of Alberta in Canada. "Before falling into the black hole this material gets very hot and emits brightly in X-rays. This one is so quiet that it's nearly a stealth black hole."
A "peculiar" basis of radio waves first tipped off expert to the presence of this black hole.
These radio waves were being emit as strongly as if they were pending from a black hole, but the researchers were only detect faint pulses of X-rays, which doesn’t match up with our understanding of how black holes work. The team realised that these weak X-rays were a effect of the black hole working so slowly.
VLA J2130+12 has about one-tenth to one-fifth the mass of our own Sun and is 7,200 light-years away, which is well within our own Milky Way. According to the researchers behind the new detection, some of these hidden black holes could be still closer to Earth: thankfully though they'll at rest be many light years away, so there's no danger of us person sucked into a void just yet.
Many more regions of the sky will require to be mapped in this kind of detail if we're to spot other stealth black holes like this one.
"Unless we were very lucky to find one source like this in a small patch of the sky, there have to be many additional of these black hole binaries in our Galaxy than we used to think," said single of the researchers, Arash Bahramian from the University of Alberta.
"Usually, we discover black holes when they are pulling in lots of material," explained guide researcher Bailey Tetarenko from the University of Alberta in Canada. "Before falling into the black hole this material gets very hot and emits brightly in X-rays. This one is so quiet that it's nearly a stealth black hole."
A "peculiar" basis of radio waves first tipped off expert to the presence of this black hole.
These radio waves were being emit as strongly as if they were pending from a black hole, but the researchers were only detect faint pulses of X-rays, which doesn’t match up with our understanding of how black holes work. The team realised that these weak X-rays were a effect of the black hole working so slowly.
VLA J2130+12 has about one-tenth to one-fifth the mass of our own Sun and is 7,200 light-years away, which is well within our own Milky Way. According to the researchers behind the new detection, some of these hidden black holes could be still closer to Earth: thankfully though they'll at rest be many light years away, so there's no danger of us person sucked into a void just yet.
Many more regions of the sky will require to be mapped in this kind of detail if we're to spot other stealth black holes like this one.
"Unless we were very lucky to find one source like this in a small patch of the sky, there have to be many additional of these black hole binaries in our Galaxy than we used to think," said single of the researchers, Arash Bahramian from the University of Alberta.
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