An object with a mass 8,200 times that of the Sun, considered the “missing link” in the evolution of the galaxy containing Earth, has unintentionally revealed its identity.
A new study shows that 7 stars exhibiting strange behavior in the Omega Centauri star cluster of the Milky Way galaxy may be influenced by a type of extremely rare “dark monster.”
These are intermediate-mass black holes, a form of “unexplained objects.”
The rarest black hole near Earth has just been identified – (Image AI: Anh Thư).
We are already familiar with supermassive black holes like Sagittarius A*, which serves as the “heart” of the Milky Way. Other galaxies also contain this type of black hole.
Additionally, there are smaller black holes known as “stellar-mass black holes,” resulting from the ultimate collapse of supergiant stars.
However, a new type of black hole, lying between these two basic types, has recently begun to emerge, referred to as
“intermediate-mass black holes” (IMBH). They are too large to have formed from any star, yet too small to be the center of any galaxy.
Deciphering the puzzle of the origin of IMBHs is also about finding the missing link in the evolution of the Milky Way and other galaxies.
Now, researcher Maximilian Häberle from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA – Germany) and his colleagues have found a golden opportunity to study IMBHs.
According to Live Science, they compared 500 images of Omega Centauri taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and mapped the movement of approximately 1.4 million stars at the center of the cluster.
This revealed at least 7 stars “that shouldn’t be there.” They are moving fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the star cluster and drift into intergalactic space. Yet some mysterious force keeps them trapped.
Location of the black hole within the star cluster – (Image: MPIA).
All analyses point to a singular result: these 7 stars are being influenced by a massive black hole with a mass 8,200 times that of the Sun.
At a distance of 15,800 light-years from the Omega Centauri star cluster to Earth, this IMBH is the largest black hole near Earth ever discovered.
Previously, some other black holes had been identified closer to us, but they were all stellar-mass black holes.
