Mystery Black Hole seems to have launched a star on the milky way

A mysterious black hole – which remains to be discovered – in one of the spiral arms of our galaxy seems to have propelled a star on the Milky Way, said an international team of astronomers.

Scientists have discovered a so-called "fleeing star", dubbed PG 1610 + 062, located in the outer halo of the Milky Way – a vast region that surrounds the galaxy – far from its star-forming regions.

Generally, the halo contains some of the oldest stars in the galaxy and the researchers had already thought that the PG 1610 + 062 was one of them with a mass equal to half that of our sun. However, observations with the W. Keck observatory revealed that the star was surprisingly young and ten times more massive than the sun.

But how is the PG 1610 + 062 found in the halo, far from the star formation regions of the galaxy? Well, according to a study published in the journal Astronomy and astrophysics, Keck's observations indicate that the star was ejected from its original group at a speed almost sufficient to escape the galaxy.

Astronomers already know a handful of objects in the galaxy called "hyper-speed stars", rare objects that travel at speeds sufficient to escape the galaxy by overcoming its strong gravitational pull.

For that to be possible, these stars must be accelerated to extremely high speeds by incredibly massive objects. For about three decades, scientists have agreed to think that a black hole of a mass of four million suns would be capable of such a feat if a two-star or two-star system would Was approaching too much. In this case, the black hole would engulf one of the stars and eject the other at high speed.

This model became more accepted in the 2000s as scientists began to discover solid evidence suggesting that such a black hole existed at the center of our galaxy. In light of this, the possibility that PG 1610 + 062 was ejected from the galactic center by the supermassive black hole seems plausible.

However, in the latest study, the team made further observations of the fleeing star with the Gaia spacecraft of the European Space Agency.

In addition, the data collected on the motion of the star indicate that PG1610 + 062 could have been projected across the galaxy only through a median black hole (MMBH), according to astronomers. This result is intriguing because, while astronomers have predicted the existence of MMBH in some regions of the spiral arms of our galaxy, no one has yet identified one.

"Now, PG1610 + 062 could provide evidence that MMBHs might well exist in our galaxy.The race is underway to find them," said Andreas Irrgang, lead author of the Friedrich University study. -Alexander in Germany, in a statement.