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Have astronomers found a new class of tiny black hole?
Black holes are the cosmic champions of hide-and-seek. Einstein predicted they existed in 1916, but it took over 100 years before a telescope as wide as the world snapped the first picture of a black hole. They're elusive beasts, avoiding detection because they swallow up light. Even so, astronomers can see the tell-tale signs of black holes in the universe by studying different forms of radiation, like X-rays. So far, that's worked -- and a huge number of black holes have been discovered by looking for these signs.
However, an entirely new detection method, pioneered by researchers at The Ohio State University, suggests there may be a whole population of black holes we've been missing.
The findings, published in the journal Science on Nov. 1, detail the discovery of a black hole orbiting the giant star 2MASS J05215658+4359220 (J05215658, for short) using data from Earth-based telescopes and Gaia satellite observations. The team shows J05215658 is being orbited by a massive unseen companion -- and they suspect it might be an entirely new class of black holes.
A noninteracting low-mass black hole–giant star binary system, Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aau4005)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday November 04 2019, @11:18PM (6 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:32AM (2 children)
The climate change would be *everything* to do with what's there at the focus - or more specifically, what's suddenly NOT there. Namely, a massive fusion furnace flooding our planet with warming radiation. :-D
They can accumulate new material, but they will do so at a much slower rate than they did as a star, since interstellar debris can slingshot much closer to the center of mass without hitting anything before eternally departing on a hyperbolic "orbit" (and non-interstellar debris was probably only a few percent of the original mass of the star). Of course, as a star it was also belching out material at a phenomenal rate, which typically more than counteracts any net accumulation. Still, in order to be devoured by a black hole, you first have to hit it - and in turning into a black hole our sun would shrink from, 865,000 miles across, to only about 6, shrinking the area of the "bullseye" (and thus the impact rate) by a factor of about 20 billion. And orbital dynamics make actually hitting the sun already an extremely unlikely event.
I would fully expect the vast majority of black holes to be almost completely inert - it's only collisions with interstellar gas clouds and other star systems that would ever feed them more than a tiny trickle of material - and even those are unlikley to feed it much - a sun-mass black hole passing through our solar system would devastate the orbits of the planets, but it's very unlikely that it would manage to capture any material that didn't lie *directly* within that 6-mile wide path. Everything else would slingshot around it - quite possibly being torn apart into gravel and launched out of our solar system, but almost certainly not being captured in orbit around the black hole, since it all started out with escape velocity from the black hole's perspective.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:59AM (1 child)
regarding slingshotting - there will also be increased spaghettification from such closer approaches, so not all of it will be able to fly by hyperbolically, comets are seemingly quite crumbly, for example.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 05 2019, @01:18AM
was being nagged to stop SN-ing and turn off the monitor at the time...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:41AM (2 children)
Well, our orbit might wobble less, because a teeny little black hole might not slosh around so much as the sun's innards do.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:47AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 05 2019, @10:00AM
Don't forget the even greater effect in the solar system: radiation pressure [wikipedia.org].
The difference would be much greater for smaller objects and those closer to the Sun, and "comet" trajectories would be affected even more due to the newfound lack of outgassing.
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