The stray black hole hanging around Just the Milky Way demonstrates that Einstein was correct

 

Two groups of researchers located the compact star object in a spiral arm of the Milky Way using general relativity principles to determine the object's mass and velocity directly.

 

Researchers have made the historic discovery of the first-ever free-floating black hole in our galaxy. Not only did the group identify the wandering object, but they were also able to precisely determine its mass by using the Hubble Space Telescope, which is something that researchers in the past had only been able to infer.

 

The stellar-mass black hole can be found in the spiral arm of the Milky Way known as Carina-Sagittarius, which is around 5,000 light-years away from Earth. These objects almost always have partner stars, but this one is all by itself.

 

Casey Lam of the University of California, Berkeley, and Kailash C. Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, was responsible for the discovery that was made using data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Kailash C. Sahu is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

 

According to Kailash C. Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and leader of one of the groups, there should be approximately 100 million black holes in our galaxy, a significant fraction of which should be isolated. This information was provided to Live Science by the researcher. To this day, a single solitary black hole has not been discovered.

 

The research group led by Sahu found that the mass of the celestial wanderer is seven times that of the sun. The black hole is moving at a speed of approximately 100,800 miles per hour (162,200 kilometers per hour) suggests that the mechanism that generated it propelled it forward at extremely high velocities.

 

When a large star with around 20 times the sun's mass runs out of nuclear fuel, the star eventually implodes. This procedure results in the formation of a supernova explosion and either a neutron star or a black hole in addition to the explosion. It is possible for the stellar remnant left behind after a supernova to receive a "kick" that causes it to spiral away from the stars surrounding it if the supernova is not exactly symmetrical.

 

"The black hole most likely obtained a 'natal kick' from the explosion of its associated supernova." Sahu states, "our mass measurement is the first for an isolated stellar-mass black hole using any approach." [citation needed] [Citation needed]

 

According to Sahu, to locate stellar black holes, astronomers utilize a method known as astrometric or gravitational microlensing. This is because stellar black holes do not emit light.

 

The foreground star functions as a lens when it is directly in front of the background star, known as the source. This causes the foreground star to magnify the image of the background star. According to Sahu, "Einstein's theory of general relativity correctly predicted that the lens would magnify the light coming from the source while also significantly shifting the apparent position of the source." One researcher says, "The deflection of a background star by a black hole gives us a potent tool that can not only discover isolated black holes but also precisely quantify the masses of these objects

 

However, because the deflections are so minute, Sahu noted that the scientists needed to use the high-resolution data that Hubble provided to make the observations.

 

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Ground-based telescopes have detected Microlensing events at a rate of 30,000 a year since their discovery. Scientists have utilized these events to study various astronomical objects, including stars, brown dwarfs, and even extrasolar planets. However, the microlensing events caused by black holes continue longer than those created by other objects.

 

In this particular instance, the microlensing event, designated MOA-11–191/OGLE-11–462, which was used to detect this black hole and which was monitored by Hubble for six years between 2011 and 2017, can be further distinguished from the lensing effects of an intervening star by the fact that such a star would cause a change in color in the light coming from the background source. In other words, if there were an intervening star, the light coming from the background source would be different. The fact that the teams did not observe any hue variations during this lensing event suggests that a single black hole was the source.

 

According to the theory of general relativity, the amount that light is bent is inversely proportional to the amount that the source distorts spacetime. The thing's mass determines the degree to which it will warp. Putting balls of varying masses onto a rubber sheet that has been stretched is the usual analogy that is used to demonstrate this concept. The larger the ball's mass, the more of a dent it will make when it hits the target.

 

Therefore, the team arrived at an exact mass measurement by carefully measuring the amount of deflection induced by the black hole. The gravitational effect of this black hole caused the image of the background star to be moved by about a milliarcsecond relative to the position in the sky it occupies, typically when there is no intervening massive compact object. This was done because the gravitational pull of the black hole was so strong. Because of this, the measurement obtained by Hubble is analogous to determining the height of an adult human resting on the moon's surface from the Earth's vantage point.

 

Sahu states, "We also show that the black hole is solo, with no companion nearby around 200 astronomical units (AU)," equivalent to approximately 18.6 billion miles. According to our research, there is no way that it could be a neutron star.

 

On the other hand, a different group of scientists concluded that the black hole weighed somewhere between 1.6 and 4.4 solar masses. Because of this, the second group could not rule out the possibility that the compact object in question was actually a neutron star rather than a black hole because neutron stars have a lower mass than black holes.

 

As much as we would like to assert with absolute certainty that it is a black hole, we are obligated to report any possible solutions. Jessica Lu, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, who was a member of the second research team, stated that this covers both black holes with lesser masses and the possibility of a neutron star.

 

But if Sahu's team is correct and this is a black hole, then it might help validate the number of these things in our galaxy that astronomers and cosmologists predict, as Lu stated in an interview with Live Science.

 

She stated, "We looked at five potential black holes, but only one of them has even a remote possibility of being a black hole." This leads us to believe that our Milky Way galaxy has approximately one hundred million black holes. As we discover additional black holes, we will be able to pinpoint the overall number of black holes and other characteristics of black holes with greater precision.

 

The discovery not only relies on general relativity to demonstrate the existence of this solitary black hole, but it also verifies Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity, also known as geometric gravity, and the concept of mass molding and twisting spacetime, as explained by Sahu.

 

"I was astonished and impressed at the same time by how wonderfully the measurements fit the model," he said. "I was surprised by how well the measurements fit the model." "Since the measured deflections were a perfect match, this proves that Einstein was completely correct."

Article source : https://www.livescience.com/rogue-black-hole-milky-way

Image source  : https://pixabay.com/id/vectors/bima-sakti-langit-berbintang-4872220/

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