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16/5/24
New Black Hole Discovered!
Astronomers have discovered a new black hole…in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is the galaxy Earth is located in so it is very close to home. But don’t worry, it is still 2000 light years away from us!
The new black hole, called a stellar black hole, is thought to be the Milky Way’s biggest black hole discovered so far (apart from the massive one right at the centre of the galaxy). It is absolutely huge and 33 times bigger than the Sun.
It was discovered by a mission called Gaia by the European Southern Observatory. The mission is trying to create a detailed 3D map of the stars that make up the Milky Way and beyond. All the data is gathered from a space observatory launched up into space in 2013. It is thought the mission will continue until 2025.
The black hole has been given the name Gaia BH3, named after the mission that found it. It was discovered when a star was seen wobbling on its orbit near to where it was then found. The star was being pulled about by the black holes gravitational pull and could be seen moving strangely because of it.
It is really hard to discover black holes so this was an impressive discovery. There will be many many more black holes like this in the Milky Way, but without clues like this they are incredibly hard to find. So far astronomers have found around 50 stellar black holes in the Milky Way, yet it is thought there are probably around 100 million hidden from sight.
In January the oldest ever black hole was discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope in another distant galaxy, though to be over 13 billion years old! It is also though to be incredibly big, anywhere from 10 million to 100 million times the size of our sun…completely impossible to imagine!
What is a black hole?
A black hole is an area in space where the gravity is so incredibly strong that nothing, not even light can escape it. The gravity is so strong because matter, such as a star dying, has been squeezed it to a tiny space. I still find it really hard to understand!
Black holes are really tricky, if not impossible to see, as no light can get out. Like the latest discovery shows, black holes are usually discovered by what is happening around them. A black hole has a very strong gravitational force and pulls anything too close into it, nothing can escape, not even light!
The newly discovered black hole is called a stellar black hole, which means it was caused by a massive star collapsing in on itself. When a massive star, 20 times bigger than our sun or even bigger, runs out of fuel and dies the star’s core collapses and creates a stellar mass black hole.
You have probably heard of super massive black holes? They are even bigger than we can imagine, and are found at the centre of a galaxy. The super massive black hole right in the middle of the Milky Way is called Sagittarius A and is four million times bigger than our sun!!
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