Artistic hypothetical drawing of small black hole with galaxies. (ShutterStock)
A new black hole just 1,500 light-years from Earth and three times the mass of the Sun has been discovered by a research team at The Ohio State University. And it’s within the Milky Way galaxy.
The team named it The Unicorn because of its location in the constellation Monoceros and the fact that it is the only black hole of its kind discovered so far.
Its uniqueness lies in the fact that its mass is incredibly small. Scientists previously thought that black holes with such small masses did not exist. Just over a year ago, scientists found a few of them.
The researchers did not directly observe this “unicorn”. They found a red giant star in orbit that appears to be deformed by tidal forces pulling on it. The researchers estimate that this is likely the result of its being influenced by a nearby black hole.
“Just as the moon’s gravity affects the oceans on Earth, causing tides to rise and fall, the black hole also has an effect on the surrounding star, stretching it along an axis and turning it into a rugby ball-like shape.” One of the researchers, Todd Thompson of the Ohio State University Department of Astronomy, said, “The simplest explanation is that there is a black hole there, which is the simplest and most likely one.”
The researchers calculated the mass of the black hole based on the red giant’s speed, orbital period and how much it was stretched and deformed by tidal forces: about three times that of the Sun.
This study will not only help improve scientists’ understanding of such small black holes, but also help reveal more secrets about the evolution and death of stars, as scientists believe many black holes are associated with explosions or collapse events at the end of a star’s life.
I think the field is advancing the knowledge that it is now roughly possible to understand how many low-mass, intermediate-mass and massive black holes there are,” Thompson said. Each time a black hole is discovered, it’s a clue about a stellar collapse, explosion or an in-between event.”
The study is forthcoming in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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