Astronomers have made new shocking discovery that is hidden Earth's milky way. The researchers from the Chandra X-ray Observatory has found evidence of thousands of black holes in our Milky Way galaxy.
Milky Way & Black Hole
The Milky Way is a galaxy in which our solar system is contained. The Milky Way is described as a large, barred spiral galaxy and is called "milky" due to its appearance in the night sky as a milky band of light. The galaxy was known to have
A black hole is described as a space, where gravity pulls a large amount that not even light can get out. This usually is occurring because a star is dying. Black holes can large or small, and scientists believe that the smallest black holes formed in the beginning when the universe was created. Black holes can not be seen because of the strong gravity pulls however scientist can study stars or study how strong gravity affects the stars and gas around the black hole.
In A Galaxy Far, Far Away
This new discovery showed the black holes were in the three light years of supermassive black holes that are in the center of our Milky Way, also known as Sagittarius A*. The researchers who made this discovery were led by Chuck Hailey of Columbia University in New York. Using Chandra, the team searched for X-Ray binaries, which is a system in which the black hole pulls gas away from a companion, about 12 light years of Sagittarius A*.
In X-Ray binaries, the gas is accelerated and heated to millions of degrees, which releases X-rays before being consumed by the black hole. The team researched for X-Ray binaries that had similar signatures to Earth, which led to them to discover 14 that were within three light-years of the galactic center.
The brightest X-Ray binaries can be spotted on Earth, which means that there could be a higher number of undetected black holes near the center of the galaxy, the researchers suggest. The new discovery can also provide insight on future gravitational wave research. If researchers can detect the amount of black holes that are within galaxy, it can predict the number of gravitational wave events associated to it, Week Facts suggested.
These results were published in the issue of Nature on Apr. 5, 2018. The authors of the paper strongly support these findings however they also are not ruling out the possibility that spinning neutron stars, also known as millisecond pulsars, could also account for half of the dozen observed candidates.
