They Discovered A Rare Black Hole That Could Be The Seed Of Their Formidable ‘Cousins’

using Pan-STARRS Observatory (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), located in Hawaii, the team was able to observe the same part of the sky every few days; The hope was for a supernova explosion in the first hours or days after the astronomical phenomenon occurred.

But in June 2020, they discovered something unexpected in their data: a fast-brightening object in a dwarf galaxy about a billion light-years away. “We were very, very lucky,” he explains. Charlotte Angus of the University of Copenhagen and first author of the study. After this unusual discovery, they continued to observe the thing named in 2020neh, over the next few days and weeks, not only with Pan-STARRS, but also with other ground-based observatories and even the Hubble Space Telescope. The light curve — how its brightness changes over time — peaked after just over 13 days. Then, the slow and prolonged fading of her luminosity began.

spaghetti star

The shape of the light curve and the characteristics of the light spectrum do not match those of a supernova; It looked more like a tidal perturbation event (TDE), a phenomenon that occurs when a star approaches the event horizon of a black hole, and the ‘beast”s gravity is so strong that a portion of the star’s matter is attracted to its center. , CausingmacaroniThe star and the arc of bright light.

However, the AT 2020neh held more surprises: it reached its maximum brightness more than twice as fast as a typical TDE brightness. Theorists representing these phenomena predict that smaller black holes produce rapidly rising TDEs. Using such models, the team calculated that this hole’s light curve could be caused by a black hole with a Mass between 100,000 and 1 million suns. However, there is still very little information about these events.

Is it the seed of a supermassive black hole?

Astronomers believe that most normal-sized galaxies, such as the Milky Way, have a supermassive black hole at their center. But there are other, smaller holes, such as those in AT 2020neh, for which there is still debate whether there are intermediate-mass black holes such as those discovered in their centers, which could be evidence that these objects are indeed of intermediate mass that they are. Nothing escapes from it, not even light, it will be a kind of “seed” from which the supermass will grow.

Regardless, the team notes, finding medium-sized TDEs may be a novel way to find the elusive. Medium-mass black holes. And if they can find a large enough sample, they can study whether the central holes are growing at the same rate as the galaxy, as their supermassive ‘cousins’ do.

If this hypothesis holds true for everyone, it would support the theory that galaxies grow in merging with each other, rather than arising from a single giant cloud of cosmic dust. The next upcoming terrestrial observatories, such as Vera C Robin In Chile, or the recently released James Webb, will be able to point more precisely towards these “elusive” black holes.