Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery near the center of the Milky Way galaxy: a binary star system orbiting the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. This finding challenges long-held assumptions about the stability of environments near black holes.
Astronomers have observed a binary star system orbiting near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.The discovery of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), published Tuesday in Nature Communications, is the first confirmed instance of two stars gravitationally bound to each other so close to a black hole .
Why It Matters The environment surrounding supermassive black holes like Sgr A*––which is 4 million times the mass of the sun——was thought to be too turbulent for binary star systems to survive. The discovery of D9 challenges this long-standing belief, suggesting that these regions may be more stable than previously assumed. 'This is big news,' said Florian Peissker, lead author of the study and an astrophysicist at the University of Cologne. He added that their discovery was fortuitous: 'We are actually in a really lucky situation. We observed the system just in time.' What To Know The binary stars, known as D9, are estimated to be just 2.7 million years old——remarkably young by cosmic standards——and are positioned in a narrow zone of survival. Any further apart, the black hole's immense gravitational force would tear them apart; any closer, the stars would merge into one. 'This leaves some questions still open,' said Anna Ciurlo, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved with the study. Using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers detected and measured the high velocities of the D9 stars. At first, the team believed they had found a single star, but further analysis revealed it to be a binary pair. The stars reside within the S-cluster, a group of high-speed stellar bodies that whip around Sgr A* under its immense gravitational pull. The D9 system provides fresh insight into the nature of these regions, where stars can exist despite the influence of the black hole
Binary Stars Black Hole Sagittarius A* Milky Way Astrophysics
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