First Dormant Black Hole Outside our Galaxy Discovered by the ‘Black Hole Police’

The first dormant black hole outside of our galaxy has been discovered by a group of experts from around the world, known as the "Black Hole Police."

First Dormant Black Hole Outside our Galaxy Discovered

The recent study based its finding on the observations of the European Southern Observatory's or the ESO's Very Large Telescope, according to a recent report by CNN World.

The news outlet notes that dormant black holes are actually extremely difficult to spot. Why? It comes as the dormant counterpart of black holes fails to produce significant amounts of X-ray radiation, which should have made it easier to detect in the first place.

The co-author of the study, Pablo Marchant, who is also an astronomer at KU Leuven in Belgium states that "it is incredible that we hardly know of any dormant black holes, given how common astronomers believe them to be."

A team of researchers from Europe and the United States says that dormant black holes have remained to be a typical phenomenon for scientists.

But despite that, there has been no "unambiguously detected outside our galaxy" until now.

A Marie-Curie Fellow at the Amsterdam University, Tomer Shenar, one of the folks who started the study on the dormant black hole, says that they have "identified a 'needle in a haystack.'"

The dormant black hole goes by the name VFTS 243.

The first dormant black hole discovered in our neighboring galaxy is reportedly roughly nine times the weight of the brightest star in the solar system, the sun.

The newly discovered stellar-mass black hole is found in one of our neighboring galaxies, known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

'Black Hole Police'

According to a recent report by Sci Tech Daily, the team of experts behind the latest discovery is dubbed by astronomy insiders as the "Black Hole Police."

The folks belonging to the "Black Hole Police" are primarily responsible for debunking a bunch of black hole discoveries every now and then.

However, it appears that they are now on the other side of the coin, as they have officially discovered the first-ever dormant black hole outside of our galaxy.

The Project Leader of the study, Tomer Shenar, notes this change, saying that "for the first time, our team got together to report on a black hole discovery."

It is in stark contrast to the typical role of the "Black Hole Poice" of debunking or rejecting recent black hole discoveries.

CNN notes in the same report that the group has rejected a total of 10 black hole discoveries in the past two years alone.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Teejay Boris