With the help of a wobbling star, scientists were able to detect the most enormous stellar black hole ever found in the galaxy lurking nearby.
Gaia BH3: Largest Stellar Black Hole Ever Found in the Galaxy
The black hole, dubbed Gaia BH3, is believed to be roughly 33 times bigger than the Sun. Astronomers found it when analyzing data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission. As they were doing so, they noticed an odd wobbling motion in a star in the Aquila constellation.
The wobbling and jiggling appeared due to the star orbiting the Gaia BH3 black hole.
Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer from Observatoire de Paris, part of the CNRS (France's National Center for Scientific Research), says that no one expected to find such a high-mass black hole lurking nearby without being detected. Panuzzo adds that such a kind of discovery is considered a once-in-a-lifetime feat in the field of research.
The black hole is situated roughly 2,000 light years away from the Earth. It is the second-closest known black hole in the solar system. Its league exceeds its predecessor record-holder, Cygnus X-1, which was estimated to have 21 times the mass of the Sun.
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Stellar Black Holes
Most other stellar black holes within the galaxy do not exceed ten times the Sun's mass.
Stellar black holes are particular types of black holes that form from enormous star remnants. When a star big enough runs out of hydrogen fuel for burning, it collapses under its own gravity. It then explodes into a supernova and leaves behind the huge core of the star.
If its core is big enough, it will collapse to form a black hole. This object is incredibly dense and has a tremendous gravitational pull that can even suck in light.
Stellar black holes usually have masses ranging from five to tens of times the Sun's mass. Compared to supermassive black holes, which can have masses equivalent to billions of times the Sun's mass, stellar black holes are much smaller. They are also typically found in galaxy centers.
The Gaia BH3 is the largest stellar black hole detected in the galaxy, but it is still significantly smaller than the Sagittarius. This supermassive black hole is situated in the center of the Milky Way.
Mystery of Gaia BH3's Parent Star
The black hole's orbiting star was hoped to offer clues regarding the star that died to trigger the black hole's birth, as binary stars tend to have similar compositions. Data from the Very Large Telescope's Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph Instrument on the European Southern Observatory revealed that the star was quite metal-poor, which implied that it is likely that the black hole's parent star was also metal-poor.
Metal-poor stars predominantly consist of helium and hydrogen, with minimally heavier elements. They are thought to have more mass across their lifetime and potentially leave sufficient material to form more huge black holes as they reach their demise. However, clear evidence that links metal-poor stars with high-mass black hole formation has remained elusive.
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