The truth about the "cosmological hole" in the middle of the Milky Way

(NLDO) - The "monster" containing the Earth has swallowed something that confuses cosmologists.

Inside the ancient star cluster Omega Centauri, believed to be the remnant of a galaxy swallowed by the monster Milky Way - the giant galaxy that contains Earth - a "missing link" of cosmology is believed to exist.

It is called an “intermediate mass black hole” (IMBH), elusive, unclear where it comes from and what role it plays in the evolution of star clusters and galaxies. It has existed for years as a huge gap in cosmological theories and models.

A study just published in Astronomy & Astrophysics has some bad news.

The Omega Centauri star cluster and two potential "portraits" of what lurks in its midst, which have long puzzled cosmologists - Photo: ESO

According to Live Science, astronomers first suspected the existence of a black hole in Omega Centauri when they noticed that some of the cluster's 10 million stars were moving faster than expected.

That is also the reason why an international team of scientists decided to use the Hubble space telescope to take a closer look at this star cluster.

What they were expecting was an IMBH with a mass equivalent to 8,200 times that of the Sun.

But then they realized that there wasn't just one hole in space-time where they were observing, but possibly countless smaller holes.

In other words, cosmologists have once again missed the mark in their hunt for IMBHs. They're just looking at a cluster of stellar-mass black holes.

Stellar mass black holes are one of two basic types of black holes, formed from the collapse of a supergiant star.

With masses from 10 to several dozen times that of the Sun, they are dwarfs compared to the other type of black hole, the supermassive black holes - the monster black holes - located at the center of galaxies, for example Sagittarius A* in the middle of the Milky Way, which weighs about 4 million times that of the Sun.

IMBHs, on the other hand, exist mainly in theory. There is some evidence for their actual existence, but it is not clear.

There are various hypotheses for how black holes of mass between the other two types are born, but none have been widely accepted by the scientific community.

"The hunt for the elusive IMBH continues. There may still be such a black hole at the centre of Omega Centauri, but it would have to be less than 6,000 times the mass of the Sun and coexist with a stellar mass black hole cluster," said co-author Dr Justin Read from the University of Surrey (UK).

Still, Dr Read and his colleagues believe the chances of a 6,000-solar IMBH being able to survive are low. The scenario of a cluster of stellar-mass black holes is much more likely.

"This work helps resolve a two-decade-long debate and opens new doors for future discoveries ," said co-author Andrés Bañares Hernández from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canarias (Spain).

However, there are also mixed opinions from the scientific community.

Some others have argued that interactions with other stars may have "shot" these small black holes out of Omega Centauri, so an IMBH remains the most likely explanation for the high-velocity stars at the center of the cluster.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/su-that-ve-lo-hong-vu-tru-hoc-giua-dai-ngan-ha-196250104095514683.htm