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Astronomers May Have Discovered a New Class of Tiny Black Holes

posted by chromas on Monday November 04 2019, @02:13PM   
from the back-of-the-class dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

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)

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Original Submission

• Re:A new class, really? Re:A new class, really? (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 04 2019, @11:39PM (1 child)

  by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Monday November 04 2019, @11:39PM (#916030) Homepage

  There's a wide trough between lightest BH and heaviest NS, and this seems to fit quite nicely in that gap, which would make it of quite high theoretical interest in on its own, in addition to the supposition it has a companion that's not feeding it. Hopefully more readings can be taken with bigger and better telescopes, so that the angle of inclination can be narrowed down, and the error-bars that seem to dominate the mass chart can be narrowed down. Interesting times.

  --
  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

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• Re:A new class, really? (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:47AM

  by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:47AM (#916054)

  That is true. Personally I suspect the gulf has something to do with more massive black holes having an easier time stealing material from passing star systems. If we can only see them when they're eating, and have no reason to believe they eat regularly, then it would stand to reason that the black holes we can see will overwhelmingly be the ones that are big enough to have an easy time capturing material from other star systems when they pass nearby. And even then it'll only be captured in orbit - it probably needs several planets to stir things up enough for debris to end up on a collision course with the tiny pinprick of a black hole a few miles across so that it can be devoured.

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