Sleeping giant surprises Gaia scientists After sifting through a wealth of data from ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists have discovered a ‘sleeping giant’.

Sleeping giant surprises Gaia scientists After sifting through a wealth of data from ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists have discovered a ‘sleeping giant’.

Sleeping giant surprises Gaia scientists After sifting through a wealth of data from ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists have discovered a ‘sleeping giant’.

A massive black hole with a mass nearly 33 times the mass of the Sun was hidden in the constellation Aquila, less than 2,000 light-years from Earth. This is the first time that such a large stellar black hole has been discovered in the Milky Way. So far, this type of black hole has only been observed in very distant galaxies. This discovery challenges our understanding of how massive stars form and evolve. The matter inside a black hole is so densely packed that even light cannot escape its enormous gravitational pull. Most of the stellar-mass black holes we know about consume material from nearby stellar companions. The trapped material falls at high speed into the collapsing object, becomes extremely hot and emits X-rays. These systems belong to a family of objects called X-ray binaries. Black holes are very difficult to detect because they don’t emit light unless they have a companion close enough to steal material from them. Such black holes are called “stationary.” In preparation for the release of the next Gaia catalog, Data Release 4 (DR4), scientists conduct complex tests to check the movement of billions of stars and determine if anything is unusual. doing. A star’s motion can be influenced by a companion star, a lighter star such as an exoplanet. Something as heavy as a star. Or something very heavy like a black hole. In collaboration with Gaia, there is a special team that investigates any “strange” incidents. One of these teams was focused on this research when he focused on an ancient giant star in the constellation Aquila, 1,926 light-years from Earth. A detailed analysis of the fluctuations in the star’s orbit revealed a big surprise. The star was in orbit of a dormant black hole with an extremely large mass, about 33 times the mass of the Sun. This is her third dormant black hole discovered on Gaia, aptly named “Gaia BH3”. The mass of the object makes its discovery very exciting. “This is the kind of discovery that only happens once in a research career,” explains Pasquale Panuzzo of France’s Paris Observatory CNRS, lead author of the discovery. “So far, black holes this large have only been discovered in distant galaxies by the collaboration of LIGO and Virgo with KAGRA, thanks to observations of gravitational waves.” The average mass of the known stellar-originated black holes in our galaxy is about 10 times the mass of the Sun. The previous weight record is held by a black hole in the X-ray binary star Cyg X-1, whose mass is estimated to be about 20 times the mass of the Sun. “It’s impressive to see the transformative impact Gaia is having on astronomy and astrophysics,” said ESA Scientific Director Professor Carol Mandel. “The discovery goes far beyond the mission’s original purpose of creating a highly accurate, multidimensional map of the Milky Way’s more than 1 billion stars.”

ESA menu switching Toggle ESA search ESA logo science and discovery Sleeping giant surprises Gaia scientists April 16, 2024 26920 views 60 likes! ESA / Science & Exploration / Space Science / Gaia After sifting through a wealth of data from ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists have discovered a ‘sleeping giant’. A massive black hole with a mass nearly 33 times the mass of the Sun was hidden in the constellation Aquila, less than 2,000 light-years from Earth. This is the first time that such a large stellar black hole has been discovered in the Milky Way. So far, this type of black hole has only been observed in very distant galaxies. This discovery challenges our understanding of how massive stars form and evolve. gaia black hole gaia black hole The matter inside a black hole is so densely packed that even light cannot escape its enormous gravitational pull. Most of the stellar-mass black holes we know about consume material from nearby stellar companions. The trapped material falls at high speed into the collapsing object, becomes extremely hot and emits X-rays. These systems belong to a family of objects called X-ray binaries. Black holes are very difficult to detect because they don’t emit light unless they have a companion close enough to steal material from them. Such black holes are called “stationary.” In preparation for the release of the next Gaia catalog, Data Release 4 (DR4), scientists conduct complex tests to check the movement of billions of stars and determine if anything is unusual. doing. A star’s motion can be influenced by a companion star, a lighter star such as an exoplanet. Something as heavy as a star. Or something very heavy like a black hole. In collaboration with Gaia, there is a special team that investigates any “strange” incidents. One of these teams was focused on this research when he focused on an ancient giant star in the constellation Aquila, 1,926 light-years from Earth. A detailed analysis of the fluctuations in the star’s orbit revealed a big surprise. The star was in orbit of a dormant black hole with an extremely large mass, about 33 times the mass of the Sun. This is her third dormant black hole discovered on Gaia, aptly named “Gaia BH3”. The mass of the object makes its discovery very exciting. “This is the kind of discovery that only happens once in a research career,” explains Pasquale Panuzzo of France’s Paris Observatory CNRS, lead author of the discovery. “So far, black holes this large have only been found in distant galaxies by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration thanks to gravitational wave observations.” The average mass of known stellar black holes in our galaxy is about 10 times the mass of the Sun. The previous mass record was held by a black hole in an X-ray binary in the constellation Cygnus (Cyg X-1), whose mass is estimated to be about 20 times the mass of the Sun. “It is impressive to see the transformative impact Gaia is having on astronomy and astrophysics,” said ESA Science Director Professor Carol Mandel. “The discoveries go far beyond the original objective of the mission, which was to create a highly accurate multidimensional map of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way.” Unparalleled precision The outstanding quality of the Gaia data has allowed scientists to determine the mass of black holes with unprecedented precision, providing the most direct evidence yet that black holes exist in this mass range. Astronomers face the urgent task of explaining the origin of black holes as large as Gaia BH3. Our current understanding of how massive stars form and die does not immediately explain how this type of black hole formed. Most theories predict that massive stars shed significant amounts of material through strong winds as they age. Eventually, it is partially ejected into space when it explodes as a supernova. Depending on its mass, the rest of the core continues to shrink, becoming either a neutron star or a black hole. It is extremely difficult to explain a nucleus large enough to end up in a black hole 30 times the mass of the Sun. But the clue to this mystery may lie very close to Gaia BH3. charming companion This star, which orbits Gaia BH3 at about 16 times the distance between the Sun and Earth, is quite rare, having formed during the first two billion years after the Big Bang, when our galaxy began to form. It is an ancient giant star. It belongs to the halo family of galactic stars and moves in the opposite direction to the stars in the galactic disk. Its orbit suggests the star may have been part of a small galaxy or globular cluster that was swallowed up by our galaxy more than 8 billion years ago. This companion star contains almost no elements heavier than hydrogen or helium, suggesting that the massive star that became Gaia BH3 may also have been extremely poor in heavy elements. That’s remarkable. For the first time, the theory that the massive black holes observed in gravitational wave experiments were formed by the collapse of massive protostars lacking heavy elements has been confirmed. These early stars may have evolved differently from the massive stars we see in our galaxy today. The composition of the companion star also provides information about the formation mechanism of this surprising binary system. “What struck me is that the chemical composition of the companion star is similar to that seen in older, metal-poor stars in galaxies,” said a researcher at the CNRS Observatory in Paris, who is also a member of the Gaia collaboration. Elisabetta Cuffo explains. “There is no evidence that this star was contaminated by material ejected in the supernova explosion of the massive star that became BH3. This was only after the black hole received its birth and another system captured him. It may indicate that you have found your mate.”

delicious appetizers The discovery of Gaia BH3 is just the beginning, and much remains to be learned about its complex properties. Now that scientists’ curiosity has been piqued, this black hole and his friends will definitely be the subject of detailed study. Gaia Collaboration came across this “sleeping giant” while reviewing preliminary data in preparation for the fourth release of the Gaia Catalog. The results were so unusual that they decided to announce them before the official release. The next release of Gaia data is expected to be a treasure trove for the study of binary star systems and the discovery of even more dormant black holes in our galaxy. “We have worked very hard to improve the way we process certain datasets compared to our previous data release (DR3), so we expect to discover even more black holes in DR4,” concludes Berry Hall of the University of Geneva in Switzerland and member of the Gaia Collaboration.

source: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Sleeping_giant_surprises_Gaia_scientists