According to Live Science, the discovery began when a research team led by Keio University (Japan) identified a mysterious, enigmatic dust cloud using two telescopes from the United States and Japan, naming it “Tadpole.”
True to its name, the Tadpole cloud has a bizarre shape compared to other cosmic dust clouds, featuring a gigantic “head” that tapers down towards the tail. This discovery led to an even more significant finding: what caused the cloud to take on the shape of a tadpole.
Graphic illustration of the “cosmic tadpole” and the invisible black hole next to it – (Image: KEIO UNIVERSITY)
The Tadpole is located in a region of space that is particularly intriguing to scientists, known as the “Central Molecular Zone.” This area is situated 27,000 light-years away from us, at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, where the infamous supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* resides, the heart of our galaxy.
However, beyond that supermassive black hole, there seems to be another “smaller monster” lurking.
Both powerful telescopes, the Clerk Maxwell Telescope located in Hawaii (USA) and the 45-meter Nobeyama Radio Telescope in Nagano (Japan), found no signs of anything large enough to cause the distortion of the Tadpole cloud.
But that empty region of space indicates the presence of another invisible entity in the universe: a black hole.
By calculating how this invisible object interacts with its surroundings, including the Tadpole cloud, scientists assert that it must be a medium-mass black hole—an extremely rare object that astronomers consider a treasure due to its elusive nature.
There are two known common types of black holes: supermassive black holes like Sagittarius A* found at the centers of galaxies, and stellar-mass black holes, which are the final result of a dying star collapsing.
Medium-mass black holes possess a mass that falls between these two categories and do not match any known astronomical objects that could lead to their formation. Overall, why they exist and how they are formed remains an unanswered mystery. Scientists can only attempt to find answers by discovering as many of these black holes as possible.
The discovery of this rare object has just been published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal.
