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Scientists may have found a black hole that could change our understanding of the universe.
For decades, researchers have searched for an example of a “goldilocks” black hole – one that sits between the low-mass holes found in their use and the supermassive examples that are the focus of much discussion about black holes.
The theory suggests that there are a lot of these black holes around, formed when lower mass black holes turn into supermassive holes. If we knew how many there are, it would help provide better information about the formation and evolution of black holes over time.
But in fact, finding one has been difficult, as they are too large for some means of detecting black holes and too small for others. There has been little actual observational evidence for their existence, and the existing evidence has not been definitive.
And this despite the theoretical work which suggests that there are a large number of these black holes throughout the universe. There are probably some 46,000 in the vicinity of our own Milky Way galaxy, the researchers say.
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Now researchers said in a new paper published in Nature astronomy that they found evidence of exactly such a black hole, with information about its existence coming to us from the early cosmos.
Evidence of the black hole came to Earth in the form of light, distorted by an explosion that occurred when the universe was in its infancy. Scientists have examined information on thousands of bursts caused by the collapse or fusion of stars, hoping to use one to peer into the early universe.
They do this using a process called a gravitational lens, which uses objects in the cosmos as instruments of observation. Gravitational lensing occurs when such an object takes these explosions and distorts them like a lens, creating multiple images that can be seen at different times.
Researchers can then use this delay to see objects that would otherwise never be spotted.
One of those bursts appears to have been subjected to a gravitational lens, the researchers found, by an object that had a mass of tens of thousands more than our own Sun. This suggests it’s likely the lens was caused by one of the mid-mass black holes researchers have been looking for for years, they say.
“This newly discovered black hole could be an ancient relic – a primordial black hole – created at the beginning of the Universe before the formation of the first stars and galaxies,” said study co-author Eric Thrane of the School. of Physics and Astronomy from Monash University and Chief Researcher of the ARC Center of Excellence for the Discovery of Gravitational Waves (OzGrav).
“These first black holes may be the seeds of the supermassive black holes that now live in the heart of galaxies.”
More research is needed to try to find how many of these elusive black holes exist and what they might tell us about the evolution of other types of black holes, the researchers said.
“Using this new black hole candidate, we can estimate the total number of these objects in the Universe,” said Rachel Webster of the University of Melbourne, co-author of the article. “We predicted this might be possible 30 years ago, and it’s exciting to have discovered such a strong example.”
It could also explain the mysterious growth of supermassive black holes like the one at the center of our galaxy.
“While we know that these supermassive black holes lurk in the hearts of most, if not all galaxies, we don’t understand how these behemoths are able to grow so large in the Age of the Universe,” said senior author and University of Melbourne. Doctoral student James Paynter in a statement.
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