(ORDO NEWS) — The black hole has led scientists to complete bewilderment. It turned out that she absorbed an unknown space object. Moreover, this happened contrary to all known laws of physics.
Black holes are regions of space-time that form when massive stars explode at the end of their life cycle. Black holes can then continue to grow, engulfing stars and merging with other black holes. This interaction allows scientists to identify their presence, as they are able to observe electromagnetic radiation of visible light in space.
Nowadays, astronomers have identified many black hole candidates in binary systems and have determined that a radio source known as Sagittarius A * at the center of the Milky Way galaxy contains a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 4.3 million solar masses.
Imagine their surprise, at a distance of 800 million light years, a black hole engulfed an unidentified object, and as a result of a cosmic merger enough energy was released to change the “fabric” of space-time. These gravitational waves passed through the Universe and were eventually seen above Earth on August 14, 2019.
Three detectors in the United States, sensitive enough to measure this effect, recorded activity, however, but as scientists decoded the information, their puzzlement only increased. For example, Vicky Kalogera of Northwestern University, who coordinated the report on the merger, said: “We have certainly not seen anything like this before.”
In June, in a report published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the researchers said the collision, called GW190814, was different from dozens of cosmic mergers detected by the Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO).
For millions or perhaps billions of years, the two objects orbited each other, spiraling closer and closer, until they finally collided. Astronomers determined that one of these objects was a black hole with a mass of 23 Suns, and the other was an unknown object that had a mass of approximately 2.6 Suns.
The unknown phenomenon has baffled scientists because its mass puts it in the range between the heaviest known neutron star and the lightest black hole.
“If it is a neutron star, then it has an amazing mass. If this is a black hole, then the mass is also extremely surprising. Anyway, he activated our antennas as soon as we saw him.”
Observations show that the heaviest neutron star has a mass of about 2.1 solar masses, but most are close to about 1.4 masses, and the lightest black holes have a mass of about five solar masses. Feryal Ozel of the University of Arizona, who studies the boundaries of these objects, said:
“If this object turns out to be a neutron star (in the event that a neutron star can be as massive as 2.6 solar stars), then it really changes the paradigm.”
So far, both scientists suspect that the mysterious object is a black hole, but it is extremely difficult to prove this at the moment. Scientists are not sure if there is still a chance to find out what this object is. There are simply no signs that this could be a neutron star, but their absence does not mean anything yet.
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