Out in the depths of our galaxy are lonely monsters, which are isolated black holes. Calculating the number of black holes in the Milky Way is difficult. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to identify a lonely wanderer for the first time.
The black hole was spotted by looking at the way it warps the light from the stars. Black holes don't emit light of their own, so their presence has to be inferred from how they bend light from other sources.
Most black holes are found in a system in which a black hole and a star are in close proximity. A wandering black hole is only created when an enormous star explodes as a supernova and leaves behind a dense core that forms the black hole. The force of the blow can send the core off into space, where it can continue to travel alone.
Researchers looked at data from both ground-based telescopes and Hubble in order to identify this black hole. This is where a black hole with a lot of mass warps the light traveling from stars behind it and makes it brighter for a short time.
The researchers think it was a black hole that caused the effect because it lasted for so long. If the object was a star giving off its own light, there was no change to the color of the light coming from the background stars.
The Space Telescope Science Institute and the University of California, Berkeley both looked at the same data and came up with different estimates of the object's weight. One team calculated the black hole to be seven times the mass of our sun, while the other team found it to be between 1.6 and 4% of the sun's mass. It's possible that the object is a black hole or a star.
It is still a special find. According to the lead author, the object is the first dark stellar remnant discovered and unacompanied by another star.
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