A team of international experts who are known for debunking black hole discoveries have discovered a black hole in a nearby galaxy. Astronomers call him the "black hole destroyer", and he is a member of the team.
"For the first time, our team got together to report on a black hole discovery, instead of rejecting one," said study lead Tomer Shenar.
There was no sign of a powerful explosion when the star that gave rise to the black hole vanished.
Shenar says they found a needle in a haystack. The team claims that this is the first "dormant" stellar-mass black hole to be detected outside of the universe. The work was published in an astronomy journal.
Massive stars collapse under their own gravity when a stellar-mass black hole forms. A black hole is created in a system of two stars revolving around each other. Black holes that don't emit high levels of X-ray radiation are calleddormant.
Thanks to six years of observations, the discovery was made.
It is amazing that we don't know of any black holes that are not active. The black hole is nine times the mass of the Sun and 25 times the mass of the blue star.
Black holes that are not interacting with their surroundings are difficult to spot.
"For more than two years now, we have been looking for such black-hole-binary systems," says Julia. VFTS 243 is believed to be the most convincing candidate reported to date.
VFTS 243 was found in the Tarantula Nebula region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, thanks to the collaboration. It is hard to identify these companions as black holes.
Shenar is a researcher who has discredited black holes in the past.
The skepticism was shared by the co-author of the book. El-Badry is called a "black hole debunker" by Harvard Magazine.
I had doubts when Tomer asked me to double check. There was no plausible explanation for the data that didn't involve a black hole.
The team can see the processes that lead to the formation of black holes. Astronomers think that a stellar-mass black hole forms as the core of a dying massive star collapses, but they don't know if it is accompanied by a powerful explosion.
Shenar says that the star that formed the black hole in VFTS 243 appears to have collapsed completely. Our study provides one of the most direct indications that this is a direct collapse. There are huge implications for the origin of black-hole mergers in the universe.
The black hole in VFTS 243 was found using six years of observations by the FLAmes instrument on the VLT. Astronomers can use flames to observe more than a hundred objects at once, a significant saving of telescope time.
Despite the nickname "black hole police," the team encourages scrutiny and hopes that their work will enable the discovery of other stellar-mass black holes around massive stars.
"I expect other people in the field to look over our analysis carefully and to try to cook up alternative models," El- Badry says. It's an exciting project to be a part of.
More information: Tomer Shenar, An X-ray-quiet black hole born with a negligible kick in a massive binary within the Large Magellanic Cloud, Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01730-y. www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01730-y Journal information: Nature Astronomy
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