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Astronomers make spectacular discovery: black hole created by "direct collapse".

2022-07-22T03:30:14.243Z


Astronomers make spectacular discovery: black hole created by "direct collapse". Created: 2022-07-22Updated: 2022-07-22 05:18 By: Kai Hartwig A research team from a university in Belgium discovers a previously unknown black hole. That has a very special character. Leuven/Munich – A team of astronomers from the Belgian University of Leuven has apparently pulled off a historic coup. The research


Astronomers make spectacular discovery: black hole created by "direct collapse".

Created: 2022-07-22Updated: 2022-07-22 05:18

By: Kai Hartwig

A research team from a university in Belgium discovers a previously unknown black hole.

That has a very special character.

Leuven/Munich – A team of astronomers from the Belgian University of Leuven has apparently pulled off a historic coup.

The researchers discovered a very special black hole that is located in a neighboring galaxy of the Milky Way.

The special feature of the black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud: it is "quiet".

This means that it does not reveal its existence through radiation but solely through its gravitational pull.

Astronomers from Belgian university discover "quiet" black hole outside the Milky Way for the first time

According to the astronomers, such a discovery has never been made before.

It is the first finding of a quiet black hole outside of the Milky Way.

In the journal Nature Astronomy, the research team also explained another special feature that characterizes the discovered stellar black hole.

According to initial findings, it was created without an accompanying supernova explosion, but by a "direct collapse".

"Stellar black holes are the remnants of large stars originally more than 15 times the mass of our Sun," explained Tomer Shenar, who leads the team of astronomers at the University of Louvain in Belgium.

When such a star runs out of nuclear energy, it collapses under its own gravitational pull into a black hole, the expert explained.

A supernova explosion usually occurs parallel to this catastrophe.

This ensures that some of the stellar matter is ejected into space.

This is what the quiescent black hole-partner star binary found in the Large Magellanic Cloud might look like.

© European Southern Observatory/dpa

Experts suspect billions of "quiet" black holes in the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies - many are still undiscovered

Astronomers assume that there are billions of such stellar black holes in the Milky Way and the surrounding neighboring galaxies, the so-called "Local Group".

However, their existence has so far only been proven in a few cases.

This was primarily the case with black holes, which form a binary system together with another star.

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The black holes often suck matter from their partner star through their strong gravitational pull.

The gas thus obtained then heats up and emits radiation in the high-energy X-ray range before it falls into the black hole.

This process reveals the presence of the black hole.

On the other hand, it is suspected that there are also many quiescent black holes that are not inundated with matter.

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Recently, scientists accidentally discovered another giant black hole.

You can even see it with a normal telescope.

(kh with dpa)

Source: merkur

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