WASHINGTON: Astronomers have spotted in a galaxy adjacent to our Milky Way what they are calling a cosmic "needle in a haystack" - a black hole that not only is classified as dormant but appears to have been born without the explosion of a dying star.
Researchers said on Monday this one differs from all other known black holes in that it is "X-ray quiet" - not emitting powerful X-ray radiation indicative of gobbling up nearby material with its strong gravitational pull - and that it was not born in a stellar blast called a supernova.
Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so intense not even light can escape.
This one, with a mass at least nine times greater than our sun, was detected in the Tarantula Nebula region of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy and is located about 160,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
An extremely luminous and hot blue star with a mass about 25 times that of the sun orbits with this black hole in a stellar marriage. This so-called binary system is named VFTS 243. The researchers believe the companion star eventually also will become a black hole and could merge with the other one.
Dormant black holes, thought to be relatively common, are hard to detect because they interact very little with their surroundings. Numerous prior proposed candidates have been debunked with further study, including by members of the team that uncovered this one.
"The challenge is finding those objects," said Tomer Shenar, a research fellow in astronomy at Amsterdam University, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. "We identified a needle in a haystack."
"It's the first object of its kind discovered after astronomers have been searching for decades," said astronomer and study co-author Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The researchers used six years of observations from the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope.
There are different categories of black holes. The smallest, like the newly detected one, are so-called stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of massive individual stars at the ends of their life cycles. There also are intermediate-mass black holes as well as the enormous supermassive black holes residing at the center of most galaxies.
"Black holes are intrinsically dark objects. They do not emit any light. Therefore, in order to detect a black hole, we usually look at binary systems in which we see one luminous star moving around a second, not-detected object," said study co-author Julia Bodensteiner, a postdoctoral research fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Munich.
It is typically assumed that the collapse of massive stars into black holes is associated with a powerful supernova explosion. In this case, a star perhaps 20 times our sun's mass blew some of its material into space in its death throes, then collapsed in on itself without an explosion.
The shape of its orbit with its companion offers evidence for the lack of an explosion.
"The orbit of the system is almost perfectly circular," Shenar said.
Had a supernova occurred, the blast's force would have kicked the newly formed black hole in a random direction and yielded an elliptical rather than circular orbit, Shenar added.
Black holes can be mercilessly ravenous, guzzling any material - gas, dust and stars - wandering within their gravitational pull.
"Black holes can only be mercilessly ravenous if there is something close enough to them that they can devour. Usually, we detect them if they are receiving material from a companion star, a process we call accretion," Bodensteiner said.
Shenar added, "In so-called dormant black hole systems, the companion is far enough away that the material does not accumulate around the black hole to heat up and emit X-rays. Instead, it is immediately swallowed by the black hole."
Reuters
Wed Jul 20 2022
An artist's impression showing what the binary star system VFTS 243 containing a black hole and a large luminous star orbiting each other might look like if we were observing it up close. - ESO/L. Calcada/via REUTERS
Chegubard didakwa di Mahkamah Sesyen KL esok - Peguam
Badrul Hisham Shaharin atau dikenali Chegubard akan didakwa di Mahkamah Sesyen Kuala Lumpur esok atas pertuduhan memfitnah dan menghasut.
Pulau Pinang, kerajaan pusat bekerjasama tarik pelaburan semikonduktor
Kerajaan Pulau Pinang akan bekerjasama dengan Kerajaan Persekutuan untuk meneruskan usaha menarik pelaburan dalam sektor semikonduktor, termasuk segmen reka bentuk litar bersepadu (IC) di negeri itu.
Rakyat Malaysia di Jordan jadi duta produk PMKS negara
Menteri Pembangunan Usahawan dan Koperasi Datuk Ewon Benedick menyarankan rakyat Malaysia yang menetap di Jordan supaya memainkan peranan sebagai “duta” untuk mempromosikan produk perusahaan mikro kecil dan sederhana (PMKS) SERTA koperasi negara.
Mohamed Khaled tiba di Indonesia, dijadual bertemu Prabowo
Menteri Pertahanan Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin tiba di Jakarta hari ini untuk lawatan kerja rasmi sulung beliau ke Indonesia sejak memegang jawatan itu.
SPRM mohon maklumat dari Jerman
Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia (SPRM) memohon maklumat terkini daripada pihak berkuasa Jerman mengenai dana bon 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) yang dipercayai digunakan untuk membeli kereta mewah di negara itu pada 26 Okt 2022.
SPRM siasat pemimpin kanan di utara tanah air
Seorang pemimpin kanan di utara tanah air disiasat Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia (SPRM) kerana disyaki melantik beberapa syarikat yang mempunyai kepentingan dengannya membabitkan beberapa projek pembekalan melibatkan peruntukan kira-kira RM300,000.
Kembangkan kandungan tempatan melalui AI
Menurut Setiausaha Agung Organisasi Kerjasama Digital (DCO) Deemah Al Yahya, terdapat 2.7 peratus daripada penduduk dunia tidak berhubung malah tidak mempunyai sambungan asas internet. Beliau turut berkata infrastruktur pengkomputeran setiap negara perlu mempunyai kemampuan untuk mengembangkan kandungan tempatan khususnya yang melibatkan penggunaan AI.
AI tidak dapat ganti guru
Menteri Pendidikan Rwanda, Gaspard Twagirayezu berkata kepesatan teknologi AI dalam pendidikan tidak dapat menggantikan guru malah membantu guru dalam menyediakan bahan pengajaran yang bermanfaat kepada pelajar.
Berita tempatan pilihan sepanjang hari ini
Berikut adalah berita yang paling menjadi tumpuan sepanjang Ahad, 28 April 2024.
Mesyuarat Khas WEF: Dunia perlukan persaingan sihat dalam transisi ke Orde Baharu - Menteri Luar Arab Saudi
Menteri Luar Negeri Arab Saudi, Putera Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud berkata dunia memerlukan persaingan sihat dalam transisi daripada Orde Dunia Lama kepada Orde Baharu. Jelasnya, persaingan ini akan memberi manfaat dalam bentuk kos pengeluaran lebih rendah, perkembangan inovasi dan pelaburan lebih baik. #MesyuaratKhasWEF #WEF
Saintis Malaysia terlibat dalam penemuan imej 'black hole' bersejarah
Seorang saintis Malaysia merupakan antara yang terlibat dalam penerbitan gambar pertama lohong hitam.
Ini dia imej pertama 'black hole'
Imej itu diperoleh daripada analisis komputer selama dua tahun terhadap hasil pemerhatian lapan rangkaian teleskop radio yang letaknya di atas enam gunung dan empat benua.