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A star wiggling oddly around in space may be the signpost to one of the most sought-after objects in the galaxy.
It gets more interesting. Based on the behavior of the red giant, astronomers led by Song Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have determined that the mass of the invisible object is just 3.6 times the mass of the Sun.
The European Space Agency's Gaia mission, however, is giving us an excellent tool to find the invisible. The long-term mission is mapping the Milky Way, including the stars' motions and velocities. This means when we find a star that seems to be in a dance with nothing, we can now take a closer look to see what might – or might not – be there.
The red giant star in G3425 has an estimated mass of about 2.7 Suns. And its motion suggests that it's on a relatively wide orbit, taking around 880 days to move around a mutual center of gravity with an object calculated at around 3.6 times the mass of the Sun.
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