A ‘FREE-FLOATING’ black hole may have just been uncovered for the first time by astronomers.
Thanks to Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope, scientists believe they may have detected a wandering black hole.
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A black hole is an invisible place in space where gravity pulls so intensely that even light can not escape it.
The gravity is so strong because dense matter has been contained in a tiny space – this can happen when a star is dying.
Nasa estimates that there are around 100 million black holes roaming among the stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
However, they have never been able to firmly identify an isolated black hole – that is, until now.
“Following six years of meticulous observations, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has, for the first time ever, provided direct evidence for a lone black hole,” the US space agency said in a statement.
Researchers were able to pinpoint the drifting phantom object using precise mass measurements gathered by Hubble, called gravitational microlensing.
“This is the first free-floating black hole or neutron star discovered with gravitational microlensing,” said Jessica Lu, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“With microlensing, we’re able to probe these lonely, compact objects and weigh them. I think we have opened a new window onto these dark objects, which can’t be seen any other way.”
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Typically, black holes are found with companion stars, however, the fact that this one appears to be isolated makes it “unusual,” Nasa said.
This newly detected black hole is located around 5,000 light-years away, in Carina-Sagittarius.
Its discovery leads astronomers to believe that the nearest lone black hole to Earth might be as close as 80 light-years away.
Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system, is around 4 light-years away.
While scientists strongly believe their findings are of a wandering black hole, they also noted other possibilities.
“As much as we would like to say it is definitively a black hole, we must report all allowed solutions. This includes both lower-mass black holes and possibly even a neutron star,” Lu said.
“Whatever it is, the object is the first dark stellar remnant discovered wandering through the galaxy, unaccompanied by another star”Casey Lam of the University of California, Berkeley, added.
