First dormant black hole found outside the Milky Way

The discovery of a black hole nine times the mass of the Sun is very exciting.

The black hole is not the first contender, but it is the first to be detected outside of our universe.

VFTS243 is a black hole system that the researchers have been looking for for more than two years.

A number of dormant black hole candidates have been proposed, according to Paul Crowther, professor of astrophysics.

Massive stars collapse under their own gravity and form stellar-mass black holes. A black hole is created in a system of two stars revolving around each other.

The black hole is nine times the mass of the Earth's Sun and 25 times the size of the Sun.

The star that gave rise to VFTS243 vanished without any evidence of an explosion, according to a study published in Nature Astronomy.

As part of the international research team, Crowther has been working with Tomer Shenar from the Institute of Physics and Astronomy, who started the study at KU Leuven in Belgium.

Shenar believes that the possibility of a collapse without an explosion has important implications for the origin of black hole mergers.

Black holes that don't emit high levels of X-ray radiation are considered inactive. Black holes that are not interacting with their surroundings are hard to see. VFTS 243 was found by using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope to observe the Tarantula Nebula.