(ORDO NEWS) — Black holes weighing from thousands to hundreds of thousands of suns are almost never found.
However, several candidates for such unique objects have already been found in the center of our Galaxy, and recently this list has been replenished with one more.
Black holes can have very different sizes. Some of them are formed as a result of the collapse of large stars and get a mass of up to about a hundred solar masses.
The origin and growth of others remain largely a mystery, but they take on millions and even billions of suns. Such supermassive black holes are found in the active centers of large galaxies.
But black holes of intermediate (average) mass , located between stellar and supermassive, are practically not found. This makes them especially mysterious.
Until now, only a few more or less reliable candidates for intermediate-mass black holes have been known, including a suspicious source in the nearby Andromeda Nebula and a few within the Milky Way.
A new such object was discovered by Japanese astronomers led by Miyuki Kaneko. This is the fifth candidate that is located in the center of our galaxy.
Scientists conducted observations using the James Clerk Maxwell telescope operating at the East Asian Observatory, as well as the Nobeyama radio telescope.
An unusual object was seen in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, at a distance of about 27 thousand light years, exactly where the center of the Milky Way is located.
This is a compact cloud of molecular gas with a strange curved shape, reminiscent of a tadpole.
Such a shape could be given to it by the gravitational influence of a fairly compact and massive object.
However, in the desired region of space, approximately in the center of the curved “tadpole”, there is nothing suitable for this role. That is why astronomers believe that there is a black hole hiding there.
Their calculations showed that its mass should not be too large, but not too small, about a hundred thousand solar masses – just in the intermediate range that corresponds to medium-mass black holes.
Perhaps such objects arise as a result of mergers of black holes of stellar masses. But the exact mechanisms of their growth are unknown.
Why so many medium-mass black holes are found in the region of the center of our Galaxy is also unclear. However, first astronomers have to confirm their existence, but for now they remain only candidates.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.