The Monster Black Hole That May Be Lurking Around The Corner

Science is no stranger to new discoveries. It’s a point that has been proven countless times in various sectors, and proven yet again after researchers unveiled an unprecedented finding: a black hole may be just next door, unbeknownst to astronomers until now.

Although the original discovery of black holes can be traced back to 1964, which is over 60 years ago, the hype around these fascinating celestial objects have never died down in the fields of astronomy, physics, and more. However, the story of how this particular black hole was discovered is itself an intriguing story that deserves some attention. So today, we’re pointing the spotlight at how this black hole was found, what it means, and the science of black holes in general.

The Discovery

This black hole, unlike conventional black hole findings, hasn’t been directly observed yet through gravitational waves or X-rays. However, after continued observation of so-called ‘hyper-velocity’ stars, researchers have gathered strong evidence to believe that a giant black hole is likely to exist, a monster that hasn’t been uncovered before.

The location of this theorized black hole is relatively close to the blue marble that we inhabit, in the nearest satellite galaxy to our own called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

The LMC itself is an interesting celestial object, being both a irregular dwarf galaxy (meaning it doesn’t have a clearly defined structure like a spiral or elliptical galaxy, hence a ‘cloud’), and a satellite galaxy (meaning it orbits another larger galaxy) that orbits our own galaxy the Milky Way. It is predicted that the LMC will eventually collide and merge with the Milky Way in roughly 2.5 billion years, an example of changes can happen even in the grandest scales of the universe.

But you may not care about the LMC and its fate very much, after all, we’re here to discuss the black hole within the LMC. So how did researchers actually discover the existence of this monster?

How Scientists Found The Black Hole

To understand how scientists discovered the black hole, we have to go back to the hyper-velocity stars mentioned earlier. These stars are called ‘hyper-velocity’ for a reason: they are super fast, travelling over a million miles per hour, or more than five hundred kilometers per second. For comparison, the speed of our Sun is roughly 230 kilometers per second. It’s kind of like if our Sun was a car traveling on the highway at a casual no-rush speed, then these hyper-velocity stars would have sped past the Sun with the gas pedal pressed as far as it can go.

But how do hyper-velocity stars get to the ‘hyper’ part? The most common reason involves two stars and one supermassive black hole, with the two stars orbiting each other in a binary star system.

Because black holes have the strongest known gravitational fields of any celestial object in the universe, it can ‘capture’ other celestial objects, from stars to entire galaxies, and these captured celestial objects would be under the influence of the black hole’s gravity. That’s the reason why many galaxies have supermassive black holes in their center, including our Milky Way which orbits the black hole called Sagittarius A* (it’s kind of like a scaled-up version of our Solar system, but everything orbits the black hole).

Back to how hyper-velocity stars are created. When a binary star system gets too close to the black hole’s gravitational field, one of the stars is ‘captured’ by the black hole, so the orbital energy and momentum of one the captured star transfers to the other star, acting like a ‘slingshot’ that flings the other star into space at fast speeds. The star that is slingshot is the hyper-velocity star.

So how do hyper-velocity stars tie back to the discovery of a black hole? Well, researchers noticed that 21 such stars were shooting off into space after observing data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, a mission that aims to create the largest and most precise three dimensional map of the Milky Way by surveying a billion celestial objects. These 21 hyper-velocity stars were quite interesting (as astronomers love studying anything that has to do with the universe), so scientists decided to trace them back to their origin, the point where they likely were ‘slingshot’ by a black hole.

To the researchers’ surprise, of the 21 observed hyper-velocity stars, only roughly half came from Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way. The remaining half pointed to an unknown origin, a previously undiscovered giant black hole that lies in the LMC approximately 160,000 light-years away.

And that is how researchers, by tracing the paths of hyper-velocity stars, were able to infer that a black hole must exist somewhere within the LMC. However, this black hole hasn’t yet been observed, so its existence can’t be confirmed. But knowing that it likely exists uncovers many new possibilities, and scientists could investigate it further in the future.

What Are Black Holes?

Until now, we’ve been referring to black holes as celestial objects with huge gravitational fields. Nevertheless, that’s just part of the picture. These objects are and have always been the subject of many physicists’ research, intriguing countless researchers over generations, yet we still only have limited information about. In spite of this, what we do know about these mysterious things called black holes is already very fascinating.

The name given to these objects is itself a beautiful marvel, two simple words that describe it very well.

The ‘black’ part of black holes can mainly be contributed to the fact that they look like circles of nothingness, devoid of light and matter. They engulf anything that crosses the ‘event horizon’, where there is no chance of escaping the gravity spiral to death unless you can travel faster then light (which would theoretically require infinite amounts of energy).

The ‘hole’ part of the name can be contributed to the characteristic that black holes are like the real-life equivalent of a magical beast that can devour almost anything and never lose their appetite. They can engulf entire planets, stars, and other black holes.

However, contrary to popular belief, black holes aren’t like cosmic vacuum cleaners that suck everything into them. If you were to replace the Sun with a black hole of the same mass, nothing much would change except the fact that Earth would quickly freeze to near absolute zero temperatures (-273°C) making life as we know it impossible. The Earth, other planets, and entire solar system would continue their orbits around the black hole just as they had with the Sun, only in complete darkness.

Also, black holes aren’t completely ‘black’ either. If they devoured dust and gases, the matter wouldn’t directly fall straight into the void, but spiral around it, forming something known as the accretion disk. In the process, friction and heat results in radiation emitted from the black hole in the form of X-rays, light, or other forms of energy, making the black hole indirectly ‘visible’. However, they are indeed ‘black holes of nothingness’ when they devour nothing, as in that case, there would be no matter to form an accretion disk, hence no radiation.

So how do these cosmic beasts form? Well, they’re ‘born’ with the ‘death’ of old stars.

In the core of a star like our Sun, nuclear fusion is constantly happening, fusing lighter atoms like hydrogen into the heavier atoms like iron. But these balls of fire eventually run out of fuel to burn, and they collapse under their own gravity, and exploding in a supernova. What becomes of the old star will then be dependent on its mass.

If the core of the star had a mass less than 8 times that of our Sun, it sheds its outer layers and leave behind the core that will become known as a white dwarf.

If the core had a mass between 8 and 20 to 30 solar masses, it collapses into a neutron star, with immense density and super powerful magnetic fields that form vortexes at the poles, resulting in what looks like a lighthouse beacon.

If the core had a mass greater than 20 to 30 solar masses, it surpassing the neutron star stage, collapsing into a black hole.

Because black holes are so powerful, and have the capacity to engulf so much matter, that begs the question: where does all of the matter go after it crosses the event horizon and beyond the point of no return? It is theorized that black holes have a ‘singularity’ at its center, a point that is treated by classical general relativity as a point with no volume yet characterized with infinite density. All the mass of the black hole is thought to be concentrated into this point. However, because no one has ever been into a black hole, it’s impossible to know for sure what a black hole is really like.

But what if you tried to enter a black hole? Well, that’s where things become interesting. Physics states that the greater the gravity, the more time is warped. If someone watched you go beyond the event horizon, they would see you seemingly freeze midair, and slowly fade into nothingness. As for what you would experience, it’s most likely that you’ll undergo ‘spaghettification’ where you’ll be stretched and squashed into something resembling a noodle under the black hole’s gravitational forces. It definitely wouldn’t be a pleasant experience at all, so I don’t advise you to try it.

Conclusion

Black holes are still relatively new and unfamiliar objects to all of us, and there may be many of them lurking out there in the universe, not in the shadows, but becoming the shadows themselves. Maybe you’ll one day be the one to finally uncover the secrets of these cosmic objects, or have a black hole named after you!

I hope you learned something new today. Thank you for reading, and remember to subscribe, like, and share this article.