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Astronomers may have found mysterious black holes lurking throughout the universe

Astronomers may have found mysterious black holes lurking throughout the universe: Researchers used the world's most powerful X-ray telescope to find elusive evidence of medium-sized black holes.
 Astronomers may have found mysterious black holes lurking throughout the universe
READING NOW Astronomers may have found mysterious black holes lurking throughout the universe

Astronomers have detected many black holes, some small and some large, over the past decades. The smaller black holes were only a few suns in size, while the larger black holes equaled the sum of millions of suns in mass. However, during all these discoveries, the question of where medium-sized black holes were always remained unanswered.

This missing link between smaller and larger black holes has long been hidden from scientists. But a study published in the Astrophysical Journal last Wednesday may have discovered where these “intermediate black holes” are hiding.

In the past, astronomers had theorized the existence of medium-sized black holes. But the question of how to find them remained. Contrary to the method normally used by black hole hunters, it is very difficult to detect the light emitted by objects falling into these black holes.

Vivienne Baldassare, assistant professor at Washington State University and lead author of the study, said: “Most theories of the formation of medium-sized black holes are based on conditions found only in the very early universe. We are testing another theory that suggests they could form in really dense star clusters over cosmic time. We wanted to,” he said.

Nuclear star clusters are particularly dense, massive groups of stars that occupy the center of most galaxies. These clusters are the densest stellar environments we know of. The researchers used the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope, to test this theory. This hypersensitive space telescope has been specially designed to orbit the Earth, capturing even the weakest X-ray radiation emitted from deep space. The researchers used the telescope to look for X-ray signatures of black holes in nuclear star clusters in 108 different galaxies.

Baldassare said, “The Chandra is basically the only device in the world that can do this kind of work,” and continued: “It can pinpoint the positions of X-ray sources very precisely, which is important when looking for black hole signatures in these very compact nuclear star clusters. ”

After their analysis, the researchers found that when a nuclear star cluster is above a certain mass and density threshold, it emits X-ray signatures indicative of a black hole, at twice the rate of clusters below the threshold. They also found evidence that conditions within nuclear star clusters could allow smaller black holes to grow to medium size.

“This basically means that clusters of stars that are large and compact enough should be able to form a black hole,” says the research paper. The researchers say it’s not entirely clear why these regions are conducive to forming black holes, although previous studies have found evidence of black holes in such nuclear star clusters.

Still, Baldassare describes the team’s progress in finding nuclear cluster-derived black holes as particularly exciting: “Many of these black holes are located in an intermediate-mass regime between supermassive black holes and stellar-mass black holes, for which there is little evidence of their existence. We expect it to happen.”

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