Byline: Megan Watzke
NewsWise – Astronomers have discovered strong evidence for the nearest supermasive black hole outside the Milky Way Galaxy. This giant black hole is located in the large Magalanic cloud, one of the nearest galactic neighbors for us.
To make this discovery, researchers detected the paths with ultra-fun accuracy of 21 stars on the outskirts of Milky Way. These stars are traveling so fast that they will survive the clutches of the Milky Way or any galaxy nearby. Astronomers are referred to as “hypervalocity” stars.
Forensic experts re -created the origin of a pill based on their trajectory, the researchers determined where these hypervalocity stars come from. He found that about half of the Milky Way is connected to the supermasive black hole at the center of Milky Way. However, the other half originated from elsewhere: a pre -unknown giant black hole in the large Magalanic Cloud (LMC).
“It’s surprising to feel that we have another supermasive black hole under the block, speaking cosmic,” said JC Han of Center for Astrophysics. Harvard and Smithsonian (CFA), who led the new study. “Black hole is so secret that it has been a practically the whole time under our nose.”
Researchers found this secret black hole using European Space Agency data GAAA The mission, a satellite that has tracked more than one billion stars in Milky Way with unprecedented accuracy. He recently used a better understanding of LMC orbit around Milky Way received by other researchers.
“We knew that these hyperwell stars were present for some time, but Gaia has given us the data that we need to find out where they actually come from,” said Caltech co-writer Karim L-Badrie in Pasadena, California. “We made this remarkable discovery, combining these figures with our new theoretical models to visit these stars.”
Hyperwellosity stars are made when a double-star system undertaking is also close to a supermasive black hole. The intense gravitational bridge from the black hole separates two stars, capturing a star around it in a close orbit. Meanwhile, the other orphan star is overcome at a speed of more than several million miles per hour – and a hyperwells are born.
An important piece of team research was a prediction by his theoretical model that LMC would create a cluster of hyperwellosity stars in a corner of a supermasive Black Hole Milky Way because how LMC revolves around Milky Way. The stars evicted along the direction of the speed of LMC should get an additional boost in the speed. Indeed, his data revealed the existence of such a cluster.
The team found that the properties of hyperwellosity stars cannot be explained by other mechanisms, as the stars are being wasted when their companions undergo a supernova explosion, or the stars are being evicted by a mechanism such as described above for a double star system, but is being included without a supermasive black hole.
CFA co-author Scott Luchini also said, “We can come up with the only explanation for this data.” So in our cosmic neighborhood it is not just the supermasive black hole of Milky Way that is removing the stars from its galaxy. “
Using the relative number of stars and the relative number of people evicted by LMC and Milky Way Supermasive Black Hole, the team determined that the mass of LMC Black Hole is about 600,000 times the mass of the sun. For comparison, the supermasive black hole in Milky Way has about 4 million solar mass. Somewhere else in the universe, there are supermasive black holes with billions of times more mass than the sun.
A paper describing these results has been accepted for publication in astrophysical journal and is Available here,
About the center of astrophysics. Harvard and Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian are a collaboration between Harvard and Smithsonian designed to ask – and eventually answer the biggest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe of North -Humanity. The Center for Astrophysics is headquartered at Cambridge, MA, which has research facilities around the US and the world.
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