Just a few weeks ago around May 6, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) discovered a new black hole. The newly discovered black hole is extremely distinct when compared to other black holes, and its special features open up a whole new world to black hole astronomy.
The black hole was discovered in a stellar system called HR 6819, a stellar system of stars orbiting one another. The black hole is only 1000 light years away, which is the closest to the Earth as of now. When HR 6819 was first discovered in the original study, it was thought to be a two-starred system because only two stars could be observed, but in reality, the system contained three “massive” objects.
The third object was the black hole, and it was previously undetected because it was not engaging with its environment much. Most black holes strongly interact with their surrounding environment and cause obvious visible changes. The unique behavior of this is one reason why it was so special.
Now you might be asking, if this black hole was not disturbing its surroundings much, how was it found? This is because when astronomers were observing the orbiting patterns of the stars in HR 6819, they discovered that one of the stars would occasionally separate from the other star and start rotating an invisible object. Through further studies and research surrounding this invisible object, they finally found out that it was a black hole. With the power of math, they concluded that the object had the mass of at least a whopping four suns. With this information, they concluded that the object had to be a black hole. The discovery of an invisible black hole truly makes it special.
Since this invisible black hole is one of the first ever discovered, it marks a step for mankind, and as Dietrich Baade says it, “the tip of an exciting iceberg.” There is already another stellar system called LB-1 that Marianne Heida, a postdoctoral fellow at ESO, thinks contains an invisible black hole. Additionally the two systems LB-1 and HR 6819 are relatively close to Earth, which means there could be millions of undiscovered black holes lurking in the vast universe.
POEM:
A new black hole is found,
Its location just found.
Its hidden from sight,
So Cookie Monster can’t take a bite.
It sits silently,
yet gravitational attracts stars violently.
When we find a system of three,
Everyone laughs with glee.
There are more black holes to be found,
When will they all come to bound.
This poem is kind of bad,
Don’t make me sad.
THE END
HAIKU 1:
Black Holes are so cool,
They are extremely massive,
And they’re hard to see.
HAIKU 2:
They’re invisble,
They’re always lurking out there,
There’s millions of them.