{"id":234498,"date":"2021-04-23T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T18:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/a-black-hole-dubbed-the-unicorn-may-be-galaxys-smallest-one\/"},"modified":"2021-04-23T21:18:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T18:18:00","slug":"a-black-hole-dubbed-the-unicorn-may-be-galaxys-smallest-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/a-black-hole-dubbed-the-unicorn-may-be-galaxys-smallest-one\/","title":{"rendered":"#A black hole dubbed ‘the Unicorn’ may be galaxy’s smallest one"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#A black hole dubbed ‘the Unicorn’ may be galaxy’s smallest one<\/strong>”
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Scientists have discovered what may be the smallest-known black hole in the Milky Way galaxy and the closest to our solar system \u2013 an object so curious that they nicknamed it \u2018the Unicorn.\u2019<\/p>\n

The researchers said the black hole is roughly three times the mass of our sun, testing the lower limits of size for these extraordinarily dense objects that possess gravitational pulls so strong not even light can escape. A luminous star called a red giant orbits with the black hole in a so-called binary star system named V723 Mon.<\/p>\n

The black hole is located about 1,500 light years \u2013 the distance light travel<\/a>s in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km) \u2013 from Earth. While it may be the closest one to us, it is still far away. By way of comparison, the closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 4 light years away.<\/p>\n

Black holes like this one form when massive stars die and their cores collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe nicknamed this black hole \u2018the Unicorn\u2019 partly because V723 Mon is in the Monoceros constellation \u2013 which translates to unicorn \u2013 and partly because it is a very unique system\u201d in terms of the black hole\u2019s mass and relative closeness to Earth, said Ohio State University astronomy doctoral student Tharindu Jayasinghe, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.<\/p>\n

There are three categories of black holes. The smallest, like \u2018the Unicorn,\u2019 are so-called stellar mass black holes formed by the gravitational collapse of a single star. There are gargantuan \u2018supermassive\u2019 black holes like the one at our galaxy\u2019s center, 26,000 light years from Earth, which is four million times the sun\u2019s mass. A few intermedia<\/a>te-mass black holes also have been found with masses somewhere in between.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is clear that nature makes black holes of a wide range of masses. But a three-solar-mass black hole is a big surprise. There are no very good models for how to make such a black hole, but I am sure people will work on that more now,\u201d said Ohio State University astronomy professor and study co-author Kris Stanek.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Unicorn\u2019 falls into what the researchers called a \u201cmass gap\u201d between the largest-known neutron stars \u2013 objects similarly formed by a large star\u2019s collapse \u2013 at around 2.2 times the mass of our sun and what previously had been considered the smallest black holes at around five times the sun\u2019s mass.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The unicorn\u2019 is truly one of the smallest black holes possible,\u201d Jayasinghe said.<\/p>\n

Its strong gravity alters the shape of its companion star in a phenomenon known as tidal distortion, making it elongated rather than spherical and causing its light to change as it moves along its orbital path. It was these effects on the companion star, observed using Earth-based and orbiting telescopes, that indicated the black hole\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack holes are electromagnetically dark and so they are difficult to find,\u201d Jayasinghe said.<\/p>\n

Unlike some other black holes orbiting with a star, this one was not observed to be drawing material from its companion, which is 173 times more luminous than our sun.<\/p>\n

The only smaller potential black hole is one with a mass 2.6 times that of our sun that was spotted in another galaxy, Jayasinghe said.<\/p>\n

Another team of scientists last year described a black hole roughly 1,000 light-years from Earth, but other researchers have questioned whether it is a black hole.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#A black hole dubbed ‘the Unicorn’ may be galaxy’s smallest one” Scientists have discovered what may be the smallest-known black hole in the Milky Way galaxy and the closest to our solar system \u2013 an object so curious that they nicknamed it \u2018the Unicorn.\u2019 The researchers said the black hole is roughly three times the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":234499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/2021-04-22T181406Z_532922489_RC261N9A6VYB_RTRMADP_3_SPACE-EXPLORATION-UNICORN-1-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[103166,61514,67907,5019],"class_list":["post-234498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-4-23-21","tag-research","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}