2024-04-17 18:47:48
Scientists from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission discovered There is a dormant black hole in the Milky Way galaxy with a mass of 33 solar masses, making it the most massive black hole discovered in our galaxy to date.
The black hole, called Gaia BH3, is part of a binary system (a black hole and a star orbiting each other) located about 590 parsecs from Earth – 1924 light-years from the Solar System, in the constellation Aquila. Additional data from other telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, confirmed that the mass of this black hole is 33 times the mass of our Sun.
BH3 has virtually no interaction with its companion star, making it a “dormant” black hole, detectable only by the gravitational influence it exerts on its companion.
The discovery of Gaia BH3 was made possible by analyzing tiny fluctuations in the star’s motion caused by the gravitational pull of an invisible black hole. Gaia BH3’s mass is unusual because it is significantly larger than the typical mass of black holes in our galaxy, which is typically less than 15 solar masses. The discovery of a black hole of 33 solar masses challenges current theories of stellar evolution, which cannot explain how a black hole of such mass could form from a single star.
“No one expected to find a large-mass black hole nearby, which until now had gone undetected. This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” Gaia astronomy team member Pasquale Panuzzo said in a statement.
Black holes closest to the solar system
This is not the first black hole in the Milky Way—in fact, there are probably hundreds of millions of them. 480 parsecs (1,545 light-years) from the Solar System lies the binary system Gaia BH1 in the constellation Ophiuchus with a black hole candidate. The mass of this black hole is estimated at 9.62 solar masses.
3000 light-years from the Sun in the constellation Monoceros there is also a double star system V616 with a compact object of 3 to 5 solar masses. This exceeds the maximum possible mass of a neutron star, making the object considered one of the possible candidates for stellar-mass black holes.
There is also a massive binary system 6070 light years from the Solar System, one of its components is the black hole Cygnus X-1 with a mass of about 14.8 solar. The system also includes a variable blue supergiant, designated HDE 226868, with a mass of about 19 solar masses.
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