Astrophysicists Seek For Second-Nearst Supermassive Black Hole

2 astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have proposed a method to see what could be the second-closest supermassive black hole to Planet: a behemoth three million times the mass of the Sun, hosted by the dwarf galaxy Leo I.

The supermassive black hole, labeled Leo I *, was first suggested by an independent group of astronomers at the end of 2021. The group discovered stars picking up velocity as they got near the galaxy’s center– proof for a black hole– however, directly imaging discharge from the black hole was not feasible.

Currently, CfA astrophysicists Fabio Pacucci and Avi Loeb recommend a new manner to verify the supermassive black hole’s presence; their work is described in a research released today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Black holes

“Black holes are extremely evasive things, and sometimes they like playing hide-and-seek with us,” states Fabio Pacucci, lead writer of the ApJ Letters study. “Rays of light can not escape their event horizons; however, the atmosphere around them can be extremely brilliant– if sufficient product falls into their gravitational well. Yet if a black hole is not accreting mass, rather, it emits no light and becomes impossible to discover with our telescopes.”

This is the defiance with Leo I– a dwarf galaxy so void of gas accessible to accrete that it is frequently described as a “fossil.” So, will we relinquish any hope of observing it? Possibly not, the astronomers stated.

Suggestion from the study carried out

In our study, we suggested that a percentage of mass lost from stars wandering surrounding the black hole can increase the rate required to observe it,” Pacucci says. “Old stars become large and red– we call them red giant stars. Red giants typically have solid winds that carry a portion of their mass to the atmosphere. The space around Leo I * seems to have enough of these old stars to make it observable.”

” Observing Leo I * could be groundbreaking,” states Avi Loeb, the study’s co-author. “It could be the second-closest supermassive black hole afterward the one at the center of our galaxy, with an extremely similar mass but hosted by a galaxy that is a thousand times less massive than the Milky Way. This truth challenges whatever we understand about how galaxies and also their central supermassive black holes co-evolve. Exactly how did such a large baby end up being birthed from a slim parent?”

Years of research reveal that most massive galaxies hold a supermassive black hole at their center. Also, the mass of the black hole is a 10th of a percent of the complete mass of the spheroid of stars bordering it.

” In the case of Leo I,” Loeb proceeds, “we would hope a much smaller black hole. Rather, Leo I show up to have a black hole a few million times the mass of the Sun, identical to that hosted by the Galaxy. This is exciting because scientific research typically advances the most when the unexpected occurs.”

The image of the black hole

Then, when can we have a picture of the black hole ?

” We are not there yet,” Pacucci states.

The group has acquired telescope time on the space-borne Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico and is presently analyzing the recent information.

Pacucci states, “Leo I * is playing hide-and-seek, but it produces too much radiation to stay undetected for long.”

Read the original article on PHYS ORG.

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