New News, Jakarta – Astronomers have plans to use waves in space-time to hunt for the elusive intermediate black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
The most difficult black holes to find in the universe are not large or small, but medium-sized ones, and a team of astronomers has proposed a new method of using waves in space-time to hunt for these black holes.
Known black holes fall into two general types. The first is stellar-mass black holes, which range in size from a few times to several tens of times the mass of the sun. Second, supermassive black holes, which range in size from one million to 50 billion solar masses.
Dilansi from Live Science, astronomers suggest that there may be several black holes caught between these two extremes, called intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses several thousand times that of the sun. There’s one problem, though: despite decades of searching, we haven’t found one. Therefore, a team of astronomers, writing on the arXiv.org preprint server, have proposed a new method to hunt for IMBH, using subtle waves in space-time caused by the black hole’s movement through the center of the Milky Way.
Astronomers are eager to find IMBH because it will help them understand the history of black hole formation. So far, we understand that giant black holes are not just born. Instead, they originate from tiny stellar-mass black holes. Then, over hundreds of millions of years, they engulfed every material object that came too close, and they also found and merged with each other, rapidly expanding to its current impressive size. The rapid growth means that there should be little IMBH left, as the black hole’s size is only a temporary phase on the black hole’s path to supermassiveness.
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However, other models of black hole formation suggest that IMBH may in fact be common and only difficult to detect. For example, the cramped conditions at the core of a galaxy may be suitable for producing hundreds of massive but not supermassive black holes. However, this IMBH may be hidden, because the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy will dominate our observations.
To draw those conclusions, the authors of the new study hope to use the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a planned gravitational wave detector that the European Space Agency hopes to launch in 2037. The observatory will detect gravitational waves, which are subtle waves in space-time. which was first predicted by Einstein, as they passed through the solar system. Observatory
it consists of three satellites that orbit the sun constantly and will continuously monitor the distance between them. When gravitational waves pass through, these satellites will detect a signature like a buoy in the ocean that recognizes a passing tidal wave.
To search for IMBH, astronomers have to hope for good luck. If an IMBH at the center of a galaxy happens to catch a solid remnant (such as a smaller black hole, neutron star, or white dwarf), this process will emit gravitational waves that can be detected by LISA. As the IMBH itself would rotate around the central supermassive black hole, these gravitational waves would experience a Doppler shift (much like a shift in the frequency of a passing ambulance) due to the motion of the IMBH.
If enough IMBHs are lurking in the core of our galaxy, then this quiet act of destruction might leave a subtle signature in gravitational waves. The proposed method is far from perfect: LISA will only be able to detect IMBHs if they range in mass from 1,000 to 100,000 solar masses. However, even though the chance is small, the possibility of success is still there.
