When stars die, they either form neutron stars or incredibly dense stellar-mass black holes . Extremely low mass, miniature black holes , which astronomers believe came into existence around the time the universe formed, are largely theoretical.
And then there are intermediate-mass black holes . Astronomers have long been hot on the trail of this curious cosmic oddball, but so far, the evidence has been thin.
In 2006, researchers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission spotted an peculiar X-ray flare they eventually dubbed 3XMM J215022.4−055108. The strange X-ray signature, which they believed to be a black hole ripping a star to shreds, wasn't emanating from the center of a galaxy.
Check out this next:
Astronomers spot ancient effects from a supermassive black hole's jets | Space
Astronomers have gleaned their first insight to what the jets blasting off of supermassive black holes may have done to surrounding gas in the young universe.
Scientists are curious about this interaction around a black hole because they believe the phenomenon may slow star formation in the region. And while astronomers have studied such interactions in nearby areas of the universe, they have struggled to do so at great distances. Those distances allow them to see into the past, since the longer light has to travel to reach Earth, the earlier in the universe it illuminates.
Hubble Finds Best Evidence for Elusive Mid-Sized Black Hole | NASA
Astronomers May Have Found a 'Missing Link' Black Hole Because It Ate a Star
Black holes are mysterious at the best of times. Because they emit no light, we can't see them, and we have to measure their properties based on the effect they have on the stuff around them - whether it's orbiting objects , or stuff they're actually accreting, a process that generates a great deal of heat and light .
But intermediate-mass black holes up the mystery ante. Because while we've found really titchy stellar-mass black holes (up to 100 times the mass of the Sun) and really chonky supermassive black holes (over 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, although they can get much bigger ), the weight class in between has proven extremely elusive.
In case you are keeping track:
Scientists Think They've Found a New Type of Star-Destroying Black Hole - VICE
Scientists have detected supermassive black holes that are millions or billions as massive as the Sun, as well as black holes that are only five to 30 times as massive as the Sun. But there's another class of object that has proved trickier to spot—intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), which have masses equal to hundreds or thousands of Suns but have never been clearly identified by scientists.
Now, scientists led by Dacheng Lin, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire, have identified "smoking-gun evidence" of an IMBH, making it the strongest evidence of these rare objects yet, according to a study published on Tuesday in The Astrophysical Research Letters.
To Image a Black Hole Again, Scientists May Need to Put a Telescope on the Moon | Smart
Last year, for the first time, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project imaged a black hole , resembling an orb of darkness shrouded by a fiery, eye-of-Sauron-like halo.
The image, though groundbreaking, was imperfect, featuring a hazy, out-of-focus ring of light and gas that escaped the black hole’s immense gravitational pull. Understanding this ring, which sits just outside the black hole’s border, or event horizon, is key to sussing out the nature of the massive object it encircles.
Scientists spot 'missing link' black hole with help from Hubble, United States News & Top Stories
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and two X-ray observatories, the researchers determined that this black hole is more than 50,000 times the mass of our Sun and located 740 million light years from Earth in a dwarf galaxy, one containing far fewer stars than our Milky Way. Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects possessing gravitational pulls so powerful that not even light can escape.
This is one of the few "intermediate-mass" black holes ever identified, being far smaller than the supermassive black holes that reside at the centre of large galaxies, but far larger than so-called stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of massive individual stars.
Blackhole of financial support threatens to 'decimate' generation of entrepreneurs
Hundreds of thousands of new start-ups could go bust due to gaps in the Government's rescue package for the self-employed, academics have warned.
Researchers and professors from Manchester Metropolitan University and the Enterprise Research Centre said the loophole threatens to decimate a whole generation of new entrepreneurs.
Separate research by think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) put the figure far higher at almost 2.2 million.
Happening on Twitter
Hubble's best evidence yet for 'missing link' of black holes may solve 14-year-old space mystery… https://t.co/39uER0WXPm SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Thu Apr 02 13:45:06 +0000 2020
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the culprit of a star's destruction: an elusive intermediate-mass black h… https://t.co/wuJC0SOmJm royalsociety (from London, UK) Wed Apr 01 11:22:00 +0000 2020
New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provided the strongest evidence yet for mid-sized black holes in… https://t.co/UTmlTMVspP HUBBLE_space (from space) Tue Mar 31 17:00:41 +0000 2020
In-orbit telescopes could help us image black holes like never before. https://t.co/jXsIbMVpud PopSci (from New York) Sat Mar 28 03:00:46 +0000 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment