Astronomers have discovered a black hole hidden from observations on the influence it has on the cloud of interstellar gas. The researchers note that the number of such calm black holes in our galaxy can reach more than 100 million. These results provide a new method of searching for other black holes hidden from observations and help us to better understand the growth and evolution of such objects.

Black holes are objects with such powerful gravity that nothing – and even light – can leave their limits. Since black holes do not emit light, astronomers can conclude that a black hole is present only by its gravitational influence on other objects. The masses of black holes range from about 5 solar masses to several million masses of our luminary. Astronomers believe that small black holes merge and gradually grow into larger black holes, but no one has ever seen a black hole of intermediate mass — an object whose mass would be hundreds or thousands of masses of the Sun.

In a new study, a team led by Shunya Takekawa from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan turned its attention to an object called HCN-0.009-0.044, a gas cloud moving in an unusual way near the center of the Galaxy, about 25,000 light-years from Earth towards the constellation Sagittarius. The researchers used the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array) radio observatory to observe this object in high resolution and found that the cloud rotates around an invisible massive object.

Detailed kinematic analysis of the cloud material showed the presence of a latent mass of about 30,000 solar masses concentrated in a region smaller than the solar system. Based on these data, scientists have concluded that they are dealing with a black hole of intermediate mass.

According to the authors of the work, this intermediate mass black hole is located only 20 light years away from the central supermassive black hole of the Milky Way and will fall on this giant black hole in the future, just as gas falls on it from the surrounding space.

Intermediate-mass black hole falls into Galaxy's supermassive black hole
Click To Tweet

The post Intermediate-mass black hole falls into Galaxy’s supermassive black hole appeared first on Upcosmos.com.