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turgid [soylentnews.org] writes:

At phys.org there is an article about a lone black hole [phys.org] discovered by astronomers at the University of St Andrews.

Lone black holes are very rare, and the discovery was challenged, since lone neutron stars are far more common but subsequent observations confirm the lone black hole moving through the constellation Sagittarius.

The research team made their initial observations using data from Hubble over the years 2011 to 2017. This time around, they looked at data from Hubble for the years 2021 and 2022, as well as from the Gaia space probe. They found that the object under review was approximately seven times as massive as the sun, showing that it could not be a neutron star, leaving only a black hole as the sole option.

This is the first time the existence of a lone black hole has been confirmed. All of the others previously discovered have had a companion star, either another black hole, a neutron star or an ordinary star.

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