Intermediate-mass black hole discovered in Milky Way

Black holes are objects that still hide many secrets from scientists. Astronomers have long been searching for the missing link in the universe, which is called intermediate mass black holesNow they’ve found it and it’s in our “cosmic backyard.”

Astronomers have discovered the first-ever intermediate-mass black hole. We were able to do this In the center of a tightly packed globular star cluster called Omega CentauriWhich is about 17,000 kilometers away from us. Light years. It is located in our Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers have long searched for intermediate-mass black holes, or IMBHs. We know of small objects of this type. But also giants in the form of supermassive black holes with masses of billions of solar masses. For example, the latter include: Arc A* From the center of our galaxy.

Astronomers say so. There are about 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way. These are good places to look for this type of black hole. Omega Centauri is a former dwarf galaxy without a core or nucleus called the Gaia Sausage. It is about 150 light-years across and contains about 10 million stars.

According to scientists, the processes taking place here may be similar to those known in large galaxies. They are simply smaller in size, and therefore the black holes at their centers also have smaller “dimensions.”

The research by Maximilian Haberle’s team is based on data collected over 20 years by the Hubble Space Telescope. Using more than 500 images, the scientists were able to map the motion catalogue of the central Omega Centauri region. The stars there are moving as if they were being influenced by a massive object that cannot be seen. Here lies an intermediate-mass black hole.