Scientists from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission was found The Milky Way galaxy has a black hole with a mass of 33 solar masses, making it the largest black hole discovered in our galaxy to date.
The black hole, known as Gaia BH3, is part of a binary system (a black hole and a star orbiting each other) located about 590 parsecs from Earth – 1924 light years from the Solar System, in the constellation Aquila . Additional data from other telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, confirmed that the size of this black hole is 33 times that of our Sun.
BH3 has almost no interaction with its companion star, making it an “ambiguous” black hole, visible only by the perturbation effect it exerts on its companion.
Gaia BH3 was discovered by analyzing small fluctuations in the star’s motion caused by the gravitational pull of an invisible black hole. The mass of Gaia BH3 is unusual in that it is significantly larger than the typical mass of black holes in our galaxy, which are typically less than 15 solar masses. The discovery of a black hole of 33 solar masses challenges current theories of stellar evolution, which cannot explain how such a black hole could form from a single star.
“No one expected to find a supermassive black hole nearby, which until now had not been identified. This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” Gaia astronomy team member Pasquale Panuzzo said in a statement.
Closest black hole to the solar system
This is not the first black hole in the Milky Way – in fact, there may be hundreds of millions of them. 480 parsecs (1,545 light-years) from the Solar System lies the binary system Gaia BH1 in the constellation Ophiuchus with a black hole candidate. The size of this black hole is estimated to be 9.62 solar masses.
3000 light-years from the Sun in the constellation Monoceros also contains the binary star system V616 with a compact material of 3 to 5 solar masses. This exceeds the maximum possible mass of a neutron star, making the object considered one of the possible candidates for stellar-mass black holes.
There is also a large binary system 6070 light years from the Solar System, one of its components is the black hole Cygnus X-1 with a mass of about 14.8 suns. The system also includes a variable blue supergiant, designated HDE 226868, with a mass of about 19 solar masses.
