A team of astronomers has found what it says is the best evidence yet for an elusive class of black hole.
They say the presumed “intermediate-mass” black hole betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that ventured too close.
These medium-sized objects are a long-sought “missing link” in the evolution of the cosmos .
Researchers used two X-ray observatories, along with the Hubble telescope , to identify the object.
Intermediate-mass black holes are very elusive objects, and so it is critical to carefully consider and rule out alternative explanations for each candidate, said Dr Dacheng Lin, from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, US , who led the study. “That is what Hubble has allowed us to do for our candidate.”
In , Nasa’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite spotted a powerful X-ray flare named 3XMM J . 4 – 01575879.
The nature of the X-ray flare meant that it could be explained by just two scenarios, according to Dr Lin. It was “either a distant (outside our galaxy) intermediate-mass black hole disrupting and swallowing a star or a cooling neutron star in our own galaxy”, he told BBC News.
Neutron stars are the crushed remnants of an exploded star. What is a black hole?
Astronomers effectively had to catch a mid-sized black hole red-handed in the act of gobbling up a star.
Dr Lin and his colleagues had to comb through thousands of XMM-Newton observations to find one candidate.
The X-ray glow from the shredded star allowed astronomers to estimate the black hole’s mass at , 10 times the mass of the Sun.
This isn’t the first candidate for a mid-sized black hole . But seeing the object tearing a star apart makes this detection the most persuasive yet, according to Dr Lin’s team.
Intermediate-mass black holes are key to many questions about black hole evolution. For example, does a super-massive black hole grow from a mid-sized one?
Astronomers also want to understand how mid -sized black holes form and whether they tend to reside in dense star clusters, such as this one.
“Studying the origin and evolution of the intermediate-mass black holes will finally give an answer as to how the supermassive black holes that we find in the centers of massive galaxies came to exist, “said team member Dr Natalie Webb, from the University of Toulouse, France.
The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Follow Paul on Twitter. Read More
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