This entirely new method focuses not on the black hole itself, but on the reaction to its existence.
Black holes are a wonderful thing. According to Albert Einstein, this was hypothetical, and today it is a fundamental element of the science of astronomy and governs the movement of many planets, even galaxies. But at the end of the day, if the general public has a comprehensive view of what a black hole is (“something sucks in everything and nothing can escape”), there are all kinds and sizes. And depending on their size and movement, they don’t play the same role in the universe at all.
In fact, the largest known black holes, called supermassives, are actually gravitational giants, often located at the center of galaxies, sucking in thousands of stars. But even though this is the best-known representation of a black hole, it is far from being on its own. Black holes that are invisible to astronomers are very difficult to detect and scientists must find the medium that interferes with them before they can deduce the location of the black hole.
The secret is in the eye sockets
Only the bending of light, or even the odd orbit of a star, can indicate the presence of black holes, sometimes as small as a few solar masses. Studying the orbits of stars around these black holes is a very new indirect detection method, but it seems to have paid off. In fact, researchers have identified a black hole outside our galaxy, in the nearby Magella Cloud.
The scientists’ findings are detailed in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. They explained that they detected a suspicious motion from a star, which ended in the detection of a small black hole. NGC 1850 (hence its name) is located about 160,000 light-years from us, and is found in the star cluster of the same name.
A discovery that prompted scientists to continue their research into star clusters in a region that black hole researchers have not generally studied. For Sara Sarasino, an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University, now sciatica needs to examine these constellations to reveal their tiniest secrets.
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