Astronomers have found the largest stellar black hole ever spotted, dubbed Gaia-BH3, with a mass 33 times that of the sun. It was discovered using the Gaia space telescope and is dormant, not devouring any material.
Astronomers have found the largest stellar black hole ever spotted, dubbed Gaia-BH3. It has a mass 33 times that of the sun, dwarfed only byat University College London and his colleagues found this stellar black hole , meaning it formed from a star that had reached the end of its life, using the Gaia space telescope.
No light can escape a black hole, so most of them are found by spotting the glow of the hot material orbiting them and falling in. However, BH3 is dormant, not devouring any material. Instead, the researchers found it by noticing the strange motion of a star that seemed to be orbiting a patch of empty space.
This star itself is unusual, too – it is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Most stars contain at least some heavier elements, which formed in the hearts of massive stars and were distributed throughout space by supernovae. Butwould have had very low amounts of heavy elements.
“From these gravitational wave measurements, we should be expecting to see such black holes in our own galaxy, but we hadn’t until now,” says Seabroke. And this should just be the beginning, he says: “The star is extremely bright, and generally if you find something this bright, you expect to find many more fainter.”
Astronomers Stellar Black Hole Gaia-BH3 Mass Sun Gaia Space Telescope Dormant
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