The "dark monster" closest to Earth revealed

(NLDO) - An object with a mass 8,200 times that of the Sun, considered the "missing link" in the evolution of the galaxy containing Earth, has accidentally revealed its whereabouts.

Seven strangely behaving stars in the Omega Centauri cluster of our Milky Way galaxy may be under the influence of an extremely rare "dark monster," a new study suggests.

They are intermediate-mass black holes, the "unexplained" kind of objects.

The closest super rare black hole to Earth has just been identified - Photo AI: Anh Thu

We already know about supermassive black holes like Sagittarius A*, the monster that serves as the “heart” of the Milky Way. Other galaxies have this type of black hole, too.

In addition, there are small black holes called "stellar mass black holes", which result from the final collapse of supermassive stars.

But recently, a type of black hole with a mass between the two basic types has emerged, called
"intermediate-mass black holes" (IMBHs). They are too large to be formed by any star, but too small to be at the center of any galaxy.

Solving the puzzle of the origin of IMBHs is also finding the missing link in the evolution of the Milky Way and other galaxies.

Now, researcher Maximilian Häberle from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA - Germany) and colleagues have found a golden opportunity to learn about IMBHs.

According to Live Science, they compared 500 Hubble Space Telescope images of Omega Centauri and mapped the motions of about 1.4 million stars at the cluster's center.

This revealed at least seven stars that “shouldn’t be there.” They were spinning fast enough to escape the cluster’s gravity and fly off into intergalactic space. But whatever force was keeping them mysteriously trapped.

Location of black hole in star cluster - Photo: MPIA

All the analyses point to a single conclusion: these seven stars are being crushed by a massive black hole, 8,200 times the mass of the Sun.

At a distance of 15,800 light-years from the Omega Centauri star cluster to Earth, this IMBH is the closest massive black hole to Earth ever discovered.

Previously, several other black holes had been identified closer to us, but they were all stellar mass black holes.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/bay-dau-hieu-la-lo-dien-quai-vat-bong-toi-gan-trai-dat-nhat-196240713091907774.htm